Method and device for determining orientations or fiber elements in a part made of composite material

A determination device for determining the orientations of fiber elements assembled in a part made of composite material, said fiber elements having an initial shape that is characterized by a length, a width, and a thickness, said device comprising:

• an obtaining module suitable for obtaining an image of the part, each pixel of the image representing material density at a point of the part represented in the image by that pixel;
• an extraction module configured to extract from the image, for at least one fiber element of the part, a line that is representative of that fiber element over all or part of its length in the part;
• an extension module configured to extend each line extracted from the image in width at a plurality of “reference” points of said line, in compliance with the width of the fiber element of which the line is representative, said extension resulting for each reference point in a plurality of “extended” points associated with that reference point;
• an association module configured to associate an orientation with each extended point associated with a reference point of a line extracted from the image, which orientation is parallel to the direction of the line at that reference point:
• an evaluation module configured to evaluate, for a plurality of extended points, a mean orientation of the fiber elements at those points from the orientations associated with those extended points;
• and
• a determination module configured to determine, for a plurality of orientations of the fiber elements, a proportion of fiber elements having their orientations from the mean orientations as evaluated in this way.