Anisotropy estimation properties for microstructural models

The paper concerns the evaluation of anisotropy of planar fibre systems. A general method of the estimation error quantification and a test of anisotr opy are suggested based on the Prokhorov distance between the theoretical a nd estimated rose of directions. By means of simulations, the exact distrib ution of the test statistics can be obtained for various microstructural mo dels, given test systems, and estimation methods. The approach is demonstra ted on real data from material research. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.