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3D spacer fabrics are a type of sandwich structure consisting of two separate multifilament fabric outer layers linked together with a layer of spacer monofilaments. They have been widely used as energy absorbing materials and composite reinforcement. The microstructure features and compression behavior of a typical spacer fabric were investigated experimentally and numerically in this study. Eight unit cells with 64 spacer monofilaments were reconstructed from scanning of the fabric via Micro X-ray computed tomography (μCT). The geometric variations of the reconstructed spacer monofilaments were analyzed quantitatively. It was found that spacer monofilaments in different unit cells are different in length, curvature and torsion. A series of FE models based on different numbers and combinations of the identified unit cells were created. The FE simulation results showed that the geometric variations of spacer …