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Unlike canonical phytochromes, the GAF domain of cyanobacteriochromes (CBCRs) can bind bilins autonomously and is sufficient for functional photocycles. Despite the astonishing spectral diversity of CBCRs, the GAF1 domain of the three-GAF-domain photoreceptor all2699 from the cyanobacterium Nostoc 7120 is the only CBCR-GAF known that converts from a red-absorbing (Pr) dark state to a far-red-absorbing (Pfr) photoproduct, analogous to the more conservative phytochromes. Here we report a solid-state NMR spectroscopic study of all2699g1 in its Pr state. Conclusive NMR evidence unveils a particular stereochemical heterogeneity at the tetrahedral C31 atom, whereas the crystal structure shows exclusively the R-stereochemistry at this chiral center. Additional NMR experiments were performed on a construct comprising the GAF1 and GAF2 domains of all2699, showing a greater precision in the chromophore–protein interactions in the GAF1-2 construct. A 3D Pr structural model of the all2699g1-2 construct predicts a tongue-like region extending from the GAF2 domain (akin to canonical phytochromes) in the direction of the chromophore, shielding it from the solvent. In addition, this stabilizing element allows exclusively the R-stereochemistry for the chromophore-protein linkage. Site-directed mutagenesis performed on three conserved motifs in the hairpin-like tip confirms the interaction of the tongue region with the GAF1-bound chromophor

Composite structures are extremely useful for aerospace, automotive, marine and civil applications due to their very high specific structural properties. These structures are subjected to severe dynamic loading in their service life. Repeated exposure to these severe loading conditions can induce structural damage which ultimately may precipitate a catastrophic failure. Therefore, an interest in the continuous inspection and maintenance of engineering structures has grown tremendously in recent years. Sensitive aerospace applications can have small design margins and any inadequacy in knowledge of the system may cause design failure. Structures made from composite materials posses complicated failure mechanism as compared to those made from conventional metallic materials. In composite structural design, it is hence very important to properly model geometric intricacies and various imperfections such as delaminations and cracks. Two important issues are addressed in this thesis: (1) structural modeling of nonlinear delamination and uncertainty propagation in nonlinear characteristics of composite plate structures and (2) development of a model based damage detection system to handle uncertainty issues. An earlier proposed shear deformable C0 composite plate finite element is modified to alleviate modeling uncertainty issues associated with a damage detection problem. Parabolic variation of transverse shear stresses across the plate thickness is incorporated into the modified formulation using mixed shear interpolation technique. Validity of the proposed modification is established through available literature. Correction of the transverse shear stress term in the formulation results in about 2 percent higher solution accuracy than the earlier model. It is found that the transverse shear effect increases with higher modes of the plate deformation. Transverse shear effects are more prominent in sandwich plates. This refined composite plate finite element is used for large deformation dynamic analysis of delaminated composite plates. The inter-laminar contact at the delaminated region in composite plates is modeled with the augmented Lagrangian approach. Numerical simulations are carried out to investigate the effect of delamination on the nonlinear transient behavior of composite plates. Results obtained from these studies show that widely used unconditionally stable β-Newmark method presents numerical instability problems in the transient simulation of delaminated composite plate structures with large deformation. To overcome this instability issue, an energy and momentum conserving composite implicit time integration scheme presented by Bathe and Baig is used for the nonlinear dynamic analysis. It is also found that a proper selection of the penalty parameter is very crucial in the simulation of contact condition. It is shown that an improper selection of penalty parameter in the augmented Lagrangian formulation may lead to erroneous prediction of dynamic response of composite delaminated plates. Uncertainties associated with the mathematical characterization of a structure can lead to unreliable damage detection. Composite structures also show considerable scatter in their structural response due to large uncertainties associated with their material properties. Probabilistic analysis is carried out to estimate material uncertainty effects in the nonlinear frequencies of composite plates. Monte Carlo Simulation with Latin Hypercube Sampling technique is used to obtain the variance of linear and nonlinear natural frequencies of the plate due to randomness in its material properties. Numerical results are obtained for composite plates with different aspect ratio, stacking sequence and oscillation amplitude ratio. It is found that the nonlinear frequencies show increasing non-Gaussian probability density function with increasing amplitude of vibration and show dual peaks at high amplitude ratios. This chaotic nature of the dispersion of nonlinear eigenvalues is also revealed in eigenvalue sensitivity analysis. For fault isolation, variations in natural frequencies, modal curvatures and curvature damage factors due to damage are investigated. Effects of various physical uncertainties like, material and geometric uncertainties on the success of damage detection is studied. A robust structural damage detection system is developed based on the statistical information available from the probabilistic analysis carried out on beam type structures. A new fault isolation technique called sliding window defuzzifier is proposed to maximize the success rate of a Fuzzy Logic System (FLS) in damage detection. Using the changes in structural measurements between the damaged and undamaged state, a fuzzy system is generated and the rule-base and membership functions are generated using probabilistic informations. The FLS is demonstrated using frequency and mode shape based measurements for various beam type structures such as uniform cantilever beam, tapered beam in single as well as in multiple damage conditions. The robustness of the FLS is demonstrated with respect to the highly uncertain input information called measurement deltas (MDs). It is said, if uncertainty level is larger than or close to the changes in damage indicator due to damage, the true information would be submerged in the noise. Then the actual damaged members may not be identified accurately and/or the healthy members may be wrongly detected as damaged giving false warning. However, this being the case, the proposed FLS with new fault isolation technique tested with these noisy data having large variation and overlaps shows excellent robustness. It is observed that the FLS accurately predicts and isolates the damage levels up-to considerable uncertainty and noise levels in single as well as multiple damage conditions. The robustness of the FLS is also demonstrated for delamination detection in composite plates having very high material property uncertainty. Effects of epistemic uncertainty on damage detection in composite plates is addressed. The effectiveness of the proposed refined Reddy type shear deformable composite plate element is demonstrated for reducing the modeling or epistemic uncertainty in delamination detection.

This thesis examines the dynamic mechanical properties of natural silk fibres, mainly from silkworm species Bombyx mori (B. mori) and spider species Nephila edulis, using dynamic mechanical thermal analysis, DMTA. The aim is not only to provide novel data on mechanical properties of silk, but also to relate these properties to the structure and morphology of silk. A systematic approach is adopted to evaluate the effect of the three principal factors of stress, temperature and hydration on the properties and structure of silk. The methods developed in this work are then used to examine commercially important aspects of the ‘quality’ of silk. I show that the dynamic storage modulus of silks increases with loading stress in the deformation through yield to failure, whereas the conventional engineering tensile modulus decreases significantly post-yield. Analyses of the effects of temperature and thermal history show a number of important effects: (1) the loss peak at -60 °C is found to be associated the protein-water glass transition; (2) the increase in the dynamic storage modulus of native silks between temperature +25 and 100 °C is due simply to water loss; (3) a number of discrete loss peaks from +150 to +220°C are observed and attributed to the glass transition of different states of disordered structure with different intermolecular hydrogen bonding. Excess environmental humidity results in a lower effective glass transition temperature (Tg) for disordered silk fractions. Also, humidity-dynamic mechanical analysis on Nephila edulis spider dragline silks has shown that the glass transition induces a partial supercontraction, called Tg contraction. This new finding leads to the conclusion of two independent mechanisms for supercontraction in spider dragline silks. Study of three commercial B. mori cocoon silk grades and a variety of processed silks or artificial silks shows that lower grade and poorly processed silks display lower Tg values, and often have a greater loss tangent at Tg due to increased disorder. This suggests that processing contributes significantly to the differences in the structural order among natural or unnatural silks. More importantly, dynamic mechanical thermal analysis is proposed to be a potential tool for quality evaluation and control in silk production and processing. In summary, I demonstrate that DMTA is a valuable analytical tool for understanding the structure and properties of silk, and use a systematic approach to understand quantitatively the important mechanical properties of silk in terms of a generic structural framework in silk proteins.

Helicopter rotor system operates in a highly dynamic and unsteady aerodynamic environment leading to severe vibratory loads on the rotor system. Repeated exposure to these severe loading conditions can induce damage in the composite rotor blade which may lead to a catastrophic failure. Therefore, an interest in the structural health monitoring (SHM) of the composite rotor blades has grown markedly in recent years. Two important issues are addressed in this thesis; (1) structural modeling and aeroelastic analysis of the damaged rotor blade and (2) development of a model based rotor health monitoring system. The effect of matrix cracking, the first failure mode in composites, is studied in detail for a circular section beam, box-beam and two-cell airfoil section beam. Later, the effects of further progressive damages such as debonding/delamination and fiber breakage are considered for a two-cell airfoil section beam representing a stiff-inplane helicopter rotor blade. It is found that the stiffness decreases rapidly in the initial phase of matrix cracking but becomes almost constant later as matrix crack saturation is reached. Due to matrix cracking, the bending and torsion stiffness losses at the point of matrix crack saturation are about 6-12 percent and about 25-30 percent, respectively. Due to debonding/delamination, the bending and torsion stiffness losses are about 6-8 percent and about 40-45 percent after matrix crack saturation, respectively. The stiffness loss due to fiber breakage is very rapid and leads to the final failure of the blade. An aeroelastic analysis is performed for the damaged composite rotor in forward flight and the numerically simulated results are used to develop an online health monitoring system. For fault detection, the variations in rotating frequencies, tip bending and torsion response, blade root loads and strains along the blade due to damage are investigated. It is found that peak-to-peak values of blade response and loads provide a good global damage indicator and result in considerable data reduction. Also, the shear strain is a useful indicator to predict local damage. The structural health monitoring system is developed using the physics based models to detect and locate damage from simulated noisy rotor system data. A genetic fuzzy system (GFS) developed for solving the inverse problem of detecting damage from noise contaminated measurements by hybridizing the best features of fuzzy logic and genetic algorithms. Using the changes in structural measurements between the damaged and undamaged blade, a fuzzy system is generated and the rule-base and membership functions optimized by genetic algorithm. The GFS is demonstrated using frequency and mode shape based measurements for various beam type structures such as uniform cantilever beam, tapered beam and non-rotating helicopter blade. The GFS is further demonstrated for predicting the internal state of the composite structures using an example of a composite hollow circular beam with matrix cracking damage mode. Finally, the GFS is applied for online SHM of a rotor in forward flight. It is found that the GFS shows excellent robustness with noisy data, missing measurements and degrades gradually in the presence of faulty sensors/measurements. Furthermore, the GFS can be developed in an automated manner resulting in an optimal solution to the inverse problem of SHM. Finally, the stiffness degradation of the composite rotor blade is correlated to the life consumption of the rotor blade and issues related to damage prognosis are addressed.

Cette thèse étudie les problèmes de diagnostic itératif et propose des outilsd’aide au diagnostic interactif. Différents processus de diagnostic où des outils interactifs homme-automate sont utiles, sont présentés. Ces outils permettent de résoudre des difficultés liées à la représentation d’un grand nombre d’éléments d’un système, des difficultés liées à la représentation du comportement et du fonctionnement d’un système et des difficultés liées à l’explicitation de l’expertise. Nos travaux ont conduit à la conception de différents types d’outils interactifs d’aide au diagnostic. Le premier permet d’exploiter des représentations structuro-fonctionnelles pour construire et résoudre progressivement un problème de diagnostic.Le second outil interactif permet d’exploiter des modèles de comportement construit au fur et à mesure de la résolution d’un problème de diagnostic. Enfin, un dernier outil a étéproposé pour montrer qu’il est possible de prendre compte la connaissance implicite d’un expert dans la résolution de problème de diagnostic. Un problème de diagnostic est donc présenté comme un processus itératif avec des interactions homme-automate. / This PhD thesis studies the iterative diagnosis problems and provides thecomputer-aided diagnostic tool for interactive diagnosis. Different diagnosis processes wherethe tool to support human-machine interaction are useful, are presented. These tools help totackle difficulties related to the representation of a large number of elements in a system,difficulties related to the representation of the behavior functioning of a system and difficultiesencountered while expliciting the expertise. Our work led to the design of different interactivetools to support the diagnosis process. The first tool allows to exploit the structural-functionalmodeling to build and solve progressively a diagnosis problem. The second interactive toolallows to exploit the behavioral models built step by step in the diagnosis process and tosolve the diagnosis problem. The final tool was proposed to show that it is possible to takeinto account the implicit knowledge of an expert in order to solve the diagnosis problem.A diagnosis problem is therefore presented as an iterative process with human-machineinteractions.

The confinement of concrete structures has been used for reinforcement and rehabilitation of compressed structural elements, with the objective of increasing their strength capacity and ductility. Various types of reinforcement are used: metal pipes, fiber reinforced polymers, transverse reinforcement, among others. Understanding the stress-strain behavior of confined concrete columns is an important aspect to be considered in the design of these structural elements. This work presents a study of short columns of concrete confined by transverse reinforcement and fiber reinforced polymers subjected to the centered load, employing a nonlinear theoretical model that allows obtaining the stress-strain curves. Concrete columns with various strength levels and different cross-sectional shapes are considered. The employed model is modified according with the type of analyzed problem and a comparative analysis is carried out to verify the performance of the models, considering the experimental results from several examples of short columns confined available in the literature. / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / O confinamento de estruturas de concreto vem sendo utilizado no reforço e reabilitação de peças comprimidas, com o objetivo de aumentar sua capacidade resistente e dutilidade. Vários tipos de reforços são usados: tubos metálicos, polímeros reforçados com fibras, armaduras transversais, entre outros. A compreensão do comportamento tensão-deformação de colunas de concreto confinadas é um aspecto importante a considerar para um projeto confiável desses elementos estruturais. Este trabalho apresenta um estudo de colunas curtas de concreto confinadas por armadura transversal e polímeros reforçados com fibras submetidas à carga centrada, empregando um modelo teórico não linear que permite a obtenção das curvas tensão-deformação. São considerados concretos de variadas resistências e diferentes formas de seção transversal. O modelo empregado é modificado se adequando aos diversos casos analisados, e para verificação do desempenho deste é realizada uma análise comparativa considerando os resultados experimentais provenientes de vários exemplos de colunas curtas confinadas disponíveis na literatura.

Submitted by Nadir Basilio (nadirsb@uninove.br) on 2016-10-11T15:46:56Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Hermes Augusto Batista Mendes Santos.pdf: 1211077 bytes, checksum: b7c73cd1c9d5430f4314d44bd16c7ef3 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-10-11T15:46:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Hermes Augusto Batista Mendes Santos.pdf: 1211077 bytes, checksum: b7c73cd1c9d5430f4314d44bd16c7ef3 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-27 / The positive performance and the success of sports clubs nowadays are not confined to their sports performance, it is also linked to their economic success. The opportunities of a club gains can come from various means, including the association of its brand and their sponsors to marketable products or services. The Personality of the Brand is the relationship between a human personality and a brand personality. It can also be seen as a human personality trait applied to a brand. This study aims to test two scales of measurement of the construct Brand Personality in Sport, the Tsiotsou (2012) and the Schade, Piehler and Burmann (2014), and their influence on declared loyalty and positive word of mouth as dependent variables . Data collection was made through an online survey. To analyze the data it was used Structural Equation Modeling Technique. It was achieved a sample of 301 respondents. It was found that the scale Tsiotsou (2012) gave the best predictive results regarding the dependent variables of the study. It is expected that the results of this study can increase the subject knowledge and be useful to researchers and marketers in the context of sport. / O desempenho positivo e o sucesso de clubes esportivos hoje em dia não se limitam à sua atuação esportiva, também está ligada ao seu sucesso econômico. As oportunidades de ganhos de um clube podem advir de diversos meios, inclusive da associação de sua marca e seus patrocinadores a produtos ou serviços comercializáveis. A Personalidade de marca é a relação que se tem entre uma personalidade humana e uma personalidade da marca. Pode ser vista também como um traço de personalidade humana a ser aplicada a uma marca. Esta dissertação tem como objetivo testar duas escalas de mensuração do construto Personalidade de Marca no Esporte, a de Tsiotsou (2012) e a de Schade, Piehler e Burmann (2014), e sua influência sobre lealdade declarada e boca-a-boca positivo como variáveis dependentes. A coleta de dados foi feita por meio de um survey online. Para analisar os dados foi utilizada a técnica de Modelagem de Equações Estruturais. Obteve-se uma amostra final de 301 respondentes. Constatou-se que a escala de Tsiotsou (2012) obteve melhores resultados preditivos em relação às variáveis dependentes do estudo. Espera-se que os resultados desta pesquisa possam ampliar o conhecimento e que possam ser utilizados por pesquisadores e profissionais de marketing no contexto do esporte.

Macromolecular assemblies such as the ribosome, spliceosome, polymerases are imperative for cellular functions. The current understanding of these important machineries and many other assemblies at the molecular level is poor. The lack of structural data for many macromolecular assemblies further causes a bottleneck in understanding the cellular processes and the various disease manifestations. Hence, it is essential to characterize the structures and molecular architectures of these macromolecular assemblies. Though the number of 3-D structures for individual proteins structures or domains in the Protein Data Bank (PDB) is growing, the number of structures deposited for macromolecular assemblies is relatively poor. Hence, apart from the use of experimental techniques for characterizing macromolecular assembly structures, the use of computational techniques would help in supplementing the growth of macromolecular assembly structures. This thesis deals with the use of integrative approaches where computational methods are combined with experimental data to model and understand the mechanistic features of macromolecular assemblies with a special focus on a sub-complex of the spliceosome machinery. Chapter 1 of this thesis provides an introduction to protein-protein interactions and macromolecular assemblies. Further, the modelling of macromolecular assemblies using integrative methods are discussed, with a subsequent introduction to the spliceosome machinery. In chapter 2, modelling studies were performed on the proteins involved in the general amino acid control mechanism, which is triggered in yeast under amino acid starvation conditions. The proteins involved in the study were Gcn1, a ribosome binding protein and the RWD-domain containing proteins Gcn2, Yih1, Gir2 and Mtc5. From laboratory experiments it is known that in order for Gcn2 activation, an eIF2α kinase, its RWD-domain has to bind to Gcn1 and the residue Arg-2259 is important for this interaction. As the 3-D structure for the Gcn1 region containing Arg-2259 is not currently available, its 3-D structure was inferred using fold recognition and comparative modelling techniques. Further, in order to understand the Gcn2 RWD domain-Gcn1 molecular interaction, a complex structure was inferred by using a restrained protein-protein docking procedure. As the proteins, Yih1 and Gir2 are known to bind to Gcn1 using their RWD-domains, first the structures of the RWD-domain containing proteins including Mtc5 were inferred using a Gcn2 RWD domain NMR structure. Additionally, the Gcn1-Gcn2 complex was used to build a set of complexes to explain the binding of other RWD domain containing proteins Yih1, Gir2 and Mtc5. The important molecular interactions were obtained on analysing the interacting residues in these complexes. Thus, the Gcn1-Gcn2 interaction at the molecular level has been proposed for the first time. Future experiments guided by the protein-protein complex models and the proposed set of mutations should provide an understanding about the critical molecular interactions involved in the general amino acid control mechanism. Chapter 3 describes an integrative approach that was used to decipher a pseudo-atomic model of the closed form of human SF3b complex. SF3b is a multi-protein complex containing seven components – p14, SF3b49, SF3b155, SF3b145, SF3b130, SF3b14b and SF3b10. It recognizes the branch point adenosine in the pre-mRNA as part of U2 snRNP or U11/U12 di-snRNP in the spliceosome. Although, the cryo-EM map for human SF3b complex has been available for more than a decade, the structure and relative spatial arrangement of all components in the complex are not yet known. The integrative modelling approach used here involved utilizing structural data in the form of available X-ray and NMR structures, fold recognition and comparative modelling as well as currently available experimental datasets, along with the available cryo-EM density map to provide a model with high structural coverage. Hence, the molecular architecture of closed form human SF3b complex was derived that can now provide insights into the functioning of SF3b in splicing. This might also help the future high resolution structure determination efforts of the entire human spliceosome machinery In chapter 4, the molecular architecture of the closed form of SF3b complex obtained from the use of integrative modelling approach (Chapter 3) is extensively discussed. The structure-function relationships for some of the SF3b components based on the pseudo-atomic model has also been provided. In addition, the extreme flexibility associated with some of the SF3b components based on dynamics analysis has also been examined. Further, using an existing U11/U12 di-snRNP cryo-EM map and the closed form SF3b complex pseudo-atomic model, an open form of the SF3b complex was modelled and the component structures were fit into it. Hence, it was found that the transition between closed and open forms is primarily caused by a flap containing the HEAT repeat protein, SF3b155. This Protein is also known to harbour cancer causing mutations and has the potential to affect the Closed to open transition as well as SF3b complex structure and stability. Thus, this provides a framework for the future understanding of the closed to open transition in SF3b functioning within the spliceosome. Chapter 5 builds upon the integrative modelling approach (Chapter 3) that proposed the molecular architecture of the closed form of human SF3b complex and an open form of SF3b that was derived due to a flap opening of the closed form and which might help in accommodating RNA and other trans-acting factors within the U11/U12 di-snRNP (Chapter 4). In the current chapter, the SF3b open form and its interaction with the RNA elements is studied. The 5' end of U12 snRNA and its interaction with pre-mRNA in branch point duplex was modelled guided by the open form of SF3b that provided the necessary structural constraints and the RNA model is topologically consistent with the existing biochemical data. Further, utilizing the SF3b opens form-RNA model and the existing experimental knowledge, an extensive discussion has been provided on how the architecture of SF3b acts as a scaffold for U12 snRNA: pre-mRNA branch point duplex formation as well as its potential implications for branch point adenosine recognition fidelity. Moreover, the reasons for SF3b to be defined as a “fuzzy” complex - a complex with highly flexible folded regions along with intrinsically disordered regions is also discussed. Hence, the current work adds to the excellent developments made previously and deepens the understanding of the structure-function relationship of the human SF3b complex in the context of the spliceosome machinery. In chapter 6, a methodology has been proposed for the use of evolutionary conservation of protein-protein interfacial residues in multiple protein cryo-EM density based fitting of the protein components in the low-resolution density maps of multi-protein assemblies. First, the methodology was tested on a dataset of simulated density maps generated at four different resolutions -10, 15, 20 and 25 Å. On utilizing the evolutionary conservation scores obtained from multiple sequence alignments to score the fitted complexes, it was found that there was a decrease in the conservation scores when compared to that of the crystal structures, which were used to generate the simulated density maps. Further, the assessment of the multiple protein density fitting technique to align the actual protein-protein interface residues correctly using a performance metric called F-measure showed there was a decrease in performance as the resolutions became poorer. Hence, based on evolutionary conservations scores as well as F-measure the decrease in conservation scores or performance was found to be mainly due to the errors associated with the fitting process. Subsequently, a refinement methodology was designed involving the use of conservation scores, which improved the accuracy of the fitted models and the same, was observed in an experimental cryo-EM density test case of RyR1-FKBP12 complex. Hence, the conservation information acts as an effective filter to distinguish the incorrectly fitted structures and improves the accuracy of the fitting of the protein structures in the density maps. Thus, one can incorporate the conserved surface residues information in the current density fitting tools to reduce ambiguity and improve the accuracy of the macromolecular assembly structures determined using cryo-EM. In the concluding chapter 7, the learnings on the structural and mechanistic features of protein assemblies obtained from the use of computational techniques and integration of experimental datasets is discussed. In chapter 2, the modelling of a binary macromolecular complex such as the Gcn1-Gcn2 complex was performed using computational structure prediction strategies to understand the molecular basis of its interaction. Due to the potential inaccuracies which can exist in computational modelling, the chapters 3 to 5 dealt with the use of integrative approaches, primarily guided by the cryo-EM map, in order to decipher the molecular architecture of the human SF3b complex in the closed and open forms as well as its contribution for branch point adenosine recognition. Based on the extensive experience gained in modelling of assemblies using cryo-EM data in the previous chapters, a new method has been proposed on the use of evolutionary conservation information to improve the accuracy of cryo-EM density based fitting. Hence, these studies have provided strategies for modelling macromolecular assemblies as well as a deeper understanding of its mechanistic features.

L’objectif de cette thèse est, d’une part, de proposer une amélioration des méthodes d’estimation des cuvettes d’affaissement et des méthodes d’évaluation des dommages susceptibles de se produire sous leurs effets et de l’autre, de développer des outils basés sur ces méthodes pour étudier les affaissements et les dommages sur des cas pratiques. L’étude de l'influence de la topographie sur les cuvettes d'affaissement dans des conditions d’exploitation simplifiées grâce à des modèles numériques avec des profondeurs d'exploitation et des pentes du sol variables a permis de proposer une nouvelle fonction d’influence basée sur une densité de probabilité normale asymétrique lorsque la surface du sol est non-plane. Une modélisation simplifiée des habitations en maçonnerie sous la forme de deux modèles de structures bidimensionnels croisés, alignés avec les axes d’inertie de la structure étudiée et dans lesquels la méthode des déplacements est mise en œuvre pour calculer les efforts internes et les déformations sous l’effet de déplacements imposées des fondations. Ces modèles simplifiés dont les caractéristiques géométriques et mécaniques sont définis pour chaque type de bâtiment étudié permettent d’estimer les efforts appliqués à chaque bâtiment d’une ville exposée à un affaissement de terrain et de fournir de nouveaux critères d’évaluation des dommages prenant en compte davantage d’informations que les méthodes habituelles. Une estimation des dommages dans la ville de Joeuf sur la base des nouvelles méthodes proposées, tant pour le calcul de l’affaissement que pour l’estimation des dommages, a été réalisée / The objective of this thesis is to improve the methods of subsidence computation and building damage evaluation, and to develop some tools based on these methods to study the mining subsidence and building damage cases in Lorraine. By investigating the topography influence on subsidence under simplified mining conditions, and using numerical models with varying mining depths and ground surface angles, a new influence function method, which is based on a probability density function of a skew normal distribution, to simulate the element subsidence, was firstly developed and can be used to compute the mining subsidence caused by the excavation under non-flat surface. Then, plane framed structural models were chosen to study the mechanical behavior of 3D buildings. For each building, two plane models located in the vertical sections passing through the principle inertia axes of the building’s projective polygon were considered. Their geometry and mechanical characteristics were chosen according to the construction type and used materials of the building under consideration. Then, by using the matrix displacement method with some modifications, the internal forces and displacements for the entire structure could be computed. The achieved internal forces could then be compared to damage grade criteria to determine the extent of building damage.Finally, by using the improved methods of subsidence computation and building damage evaluation, a real case application was performed in Joeuf city (France). The subsidence was computed and applied to the defined structural models as support displacements, and then the damage extents of the buildings in Joeuf were predicted