## 2 Materials and Methods  
### Materials  
3D Warp Interlock Fabrics Design  
In general, the commercially available fabric weave-design software such as TexGen(r) and WiseTex(r) are widely used to design 2D plain woven and complex 3D woven fabric architecture. In the current study, TexGen(r) software was used to geometrically model all the intended 3D warp interlock fabric architectures. Different binding and stuffer warp yarn interchange ratios, namely 100% binding and 0% stuffer (3D-8B:0S), 66.7% binding and 33.5% stuffer (3D-8B:4S)), 50% binding and 50% stuffer (3D-8B:8S), and 33.3% binding and 66.7% stuffer (3D-4B/8S) inside the 3D warp interlock fabric structure were considered. Applying different warp yarn interchange ratio inside the fabric structure could affect not only its fabric weave repeat unit but also the overall fabric structures. The weave repeat unit is the smallest constituents of the fabric structure which is combined in an extended repeat pattern form to form the overall fabric structures. The 3D warp interlock fabric structures design was then conceived by the PointCarre(r) software to prepare its peg plans before the fabric productions. In the peg planning process, all the fabric structures were drafted with the same weave drafting plan and similar weaving loom adjustment for easy production and time-saving purposes. Such arrangements provide the production of all 3D warp interlock fabric variants by only changing only the weave designs. 3D Warp Interlock Fabrics Production  
An adapted ARM semiautomatic dobby loom was used to manufacture all the 3D warp interlock fabric architectures as shown in Figure 1. The weaving loom was equipped with a 24 warp beam to produce the intended 3D warp interlock fabric structures. In preparation, each beam was loaded on a customized warp beam creep which is designed to accommodate the specified number of the warp beams (Figure 1a). The individual warp yarn ends from each beam were then carefully and separately inserted through the hole of horizontal warp yarn tension guiding systems as shown in Figure 1b. This will help to adjust and control the yarn tension during the weaving process. For better shed opening process, yarn ends from each warp beam were controlled with the specific head shaft. This greatly helps to properly control the shed opening not only for better design accommodation but also to reduce yarn degradation during the weaving process as shown in Figure 1c. A 50 cm long reed made of metals having a reed dents of 12 dents/cm were used to accommodate the 100 warp ends which comes from the same beam. This would also help to accommodate one beam warp ends in one shaft. In the weaving process, the required design was selected automatically from control panel heads which can store and read the peg plan design, but the shed opening, pick-up, and beating were carried out manually. The high-performance para-aramid yarn with 930 dtex (called Twaron(r) was purchased from Teijin Aramid, a subsidiary of the Teijin Group. All the yarns were twisted at room temperature using Twistec machine with 25 twists per meter (TPM) throughout the fiber for intended fabrics production. Such yarn is used to produce the common and recommended 2D plain weave by the Teijin Company to develop female ballistic. This is due to its good ballistic performance and high level of foldability. While manufacturing all the 3D warp interlock fabric variants, balanced fabrics with the same warp and weft yarn densities, fiber linear density (930 dtex), and same weft layers (5 layers) were used. Figure 2 shows the different manufactured 3D warp interlock orthogonal layer-to-layer fabric variants at the top and side view (weft layer). Moreover, 2D plain weave fabrics (CT-709) made of similar material (fiber and yarn) characteristics and fabric areal density with the developed 3D warp interlock fabric variants were also used for ballistic performance comparisons. The theoretical and actual fabric areal densities of all the considered fabric were found almost similar.