Abstract
We extend the notion of "coupling with a foliation" from Poisson to Dirac structures and get the corresponding generalization of the Vorobiev characterization of coupling Poisson structures. We show that any Dirac structure is coupling with the fibers of a tubular neighborhood of an embedded presymplectic leaf, give new proofs of the results of Dufour and Wade on the transversal Poisson structure, and compute the Vorobiev structure of the total space of a normal bundle of the leaf. Finally, we use the coupling condition along a submanifold, instead of a foliation, in order to discuss submanifolds of a Dirac manifold which have a differentiable, induced Dirac structure. In particular, we get an invariant that reminds the second fundamental form of a submanifold of a Riemannian manifold.