Nous nous intéressons dans cette thèse à la théorie cinétique et aux systèmes de particules dans le cadre des équations de Boltzmann et Landau. Premièrement, nous étudions la dérivation des équations cinétiques comme des limites de champ moyen des systèmes de particules, en utilisant le concept de propagation du chaos. Plus précisément, nous étudions les probabilités chaotiques sur l'espace de phase de ces systèmes de particules : la sphère de Boltzmann, qui correspond à l'espace de phase d'un système de particules qui évolue conservant le moment et l'énergie ; et la sphère de Kac, correspondant à un système de particules qui conserve seulement l'énergie. Ensuite, nous nous intéressons à la propagation du chaos, avec des estimations quantitatives et uniforme en temps, pour les équations de Boltzmann et Landau. Deuxièmement, nous étudions le comportement asymptotique en temps grand des solutions de l'équation de Landau.

The first line of defence against wireless attacks in Radio Frequency Identi cation (RFID) systems is authentication of tags and readers. RFID tags are very constrained in terms of power, memory and size of circuit. Therefore, RFID tags are not capable of performing sophisticated cryptographic operations. In this dissertation, we have designed light-weight authentication schemes to securely identify the RFID tags to readers and vice versa. The authentication schemes require simple binary operations and can be readily implemented in resource-constrained Radio Frequency Identi cation (RFID) tags. We provide a formal proof of security based on the di culty of solving the Syndrome Decoding (SD) problem. Authentication veri es the unique identity of an RFID tag making it possible to track a tag across multiple readers. We further protect the identity of RFID tags by a light-weight privacy protecting identifi cation scheme based on the di culty of the Learning Parity with Noise (LPN) complexity assumption. To protect RFID tags authentication against the relay attacks, we have designed a resistance scheme in the analog realm that does not have the practicality issues of existing solutions. Our scheme is based on the chaos-suppression theory and it is robust to inconsistencies, such as noise and parameters mismatch. Furthermore, our solutions are based on asymmetric-key algorithms that better facilitate the distribution of cryptographic keys in large systems. We have provided a secure broadcast encryption protocol to effi ciently distribute cryptographic keys throughout the system with minimal communication overheads. The security of the proposed protocol is formally proven in the adaptive adversary model, which simulates the attacker in the real world.

We solved the Landau-Lifshitz equations numerically to examine the time development of a system of magnetic particles. Constant or periodical external magnetic field has been applied. First, the system has been studied without dissipation. Local energy excitations (breathers) and chaotic transients have been found. The behaviour of the system and the final configurations can strongly depend on the initial conditions, and the strength of the external field at an earlier time. We observed some sudden switching between two remarkably different states. Series of bifurcations have been found. When a weak Gilbert-damping has been taken into account, interesting behaviour has been found even in the case of one particle as well: bifurcation series and period multiplication leading to chaos. For a system of antiferromagnetically coupled particles, highly nontrivial hysteresis loops have been produced. The dynamics of the magnetization reversal has been investigated and the characteristic time-scale of the reversal has been estimated. For more particles, the energy spectrum and the magnetization of the system exhibits fractal characteristics for increasing system size. Finally, energy have been pumped into the system in addition to the dissipation. For constant field, complicated phase diagrams have been produced. For microwave field, it has been found that the chaotic behaviour crucially depends on the parity of the number of the particles.

<p>The primary focus of this dissertation is the characterization of snap-through buckling of discrete and continuous systems. Snap-through buckling occurs as the consequence of two factors, first the destabilization, or more often the disappearance of, an equilibrium position under the change of a system parameter, and second the existence of another stable equilibrium configuration at a remote location in state space. In this sense snap-through buckling is a global dynamic transition as the result of a local static instability.</p><p> </p><p>In order to better understand the static instabilities that lead to snap-through buckling, the behavior of mechanical systems in the vicinity of various local bifurcations is first investigated. Oscillators with saddle-node, pitchfork, and transcritical bifurcations are shown analytically to exhibit several interesting characteristics, particularly in relation to the system damping ratio. A simple mechanical oscillator with a transcritical bifurcation is used to experimentally verify the analytical results. The transcritical bifurcation was selected since it may be used to represent generic bifurcation behavior. It is shown that the damping ratio may be used to predict changes in stability with respect to changing system parameters.</p><p>Another useful indicator of snap-through is the presence of chaos in the dynamic response of a system. Chaos is usually associated snap-through, as in many systems large amplitude responses are typically necessary to sufficiently engage the nonlinearities that induce chaos. Thus, a pragmatic approach for identifying chaos in experimental (and hence noisy) systems is also developed. The method is applied to multiple experimental systems showing good agreement with identification via Lyapunov exponents.</p><p>Under dynamic loading, systems with the requisite condition for snap-through buckling, that is co-existing equilibria, typically exhibit either small amplitude response about a single equilibrium configuration, or large amplitude response that transits between the static equilibria. Dynamic snap-through is the name given to the large amplitude response, which, in the context of structural systems, is obviously undesirable. This phenomenon is investigated using experimental, numerical, and analytical means and the boundaries separating safe (non-snap-through) from unsafe (snap-through) dynamic response in forcing parameter space are obtained for both a discrete and a continuous arch. Arches present an ideal avenue for the investigation of snap-through as they typically have multiple, often tunable, stable and unstable equilibria. They also have many direct applications in both civil engineering, where arches are a canonical structural element, and mechanical engineering, where arches may be used to approximate the behavior of curved plates and panels such as those used on aircraft.</p> / Dissertation

Sustainable development is now being recognised as a vital component of our society in the environmental, ethical, social, technological, economic, and institutional aspects, or dimensions, so, this thesis develops a framework to quantitatively measure sustainability. This thesis is distinctive in that it focuses on quantitative methods encapsulated in a formal assessment procedure and includes sustainability concepts that have rarely been put into practical use in sustainability reports. The framework is designed along the strategy that the methodology needs to be scale invariant and recursive, meaning the procedure is the same irrespective of the scale the user is interested in, and that different people can focus at different levels of sustainability by following a similar procedure. While the quantification process is aimed to be as unbiased as possible, a configuration of the tools from Total Quality Management (TQM) is adapted to identify sustainability indicators which are then mapped onto a scalar with mathematical functions. The sustainability indices are presented according to the amount of details needed by different users ─ some may need just one overall figure while others may need sustainability indices broken down by the six sustainability dimensions and presented on a spider diagram, while others may need all the details for analysis. This methodology also caters for sustainability analysis by different stakeholders. To fully demonstrate the potential of the methodology, the author has chosen to test it on a large-size industry sector so that it can have the capacity to be scaled up to a country or down to a small business, and on an industry sector that is important on its own right. Furthermore, this sector needs to be illustrative and has nontrivial complex problems. Under these criteria, the electricity sector of New Zealand was selected. The robustness of the methodology was investigated with inputs from three evaluators with different views: a standard view from the author that was made after much research in the sector and in the concepts of sustainability, a view with an environmental bias and one that focuses on commercial interests.

Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2007--Darmstadt.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Mainz, 2007. / Includes bibliographical references (p.453-485) and index.

Zugleich: Diss. Mainz, 2007. / Register. Literaturverz.

Techn. Universiẗat, Diss., 2003--Darmstadt.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:26:56Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2001-12-11Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:47:37Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 pereira_wf_me_sjrp.pdf: 614166 bytes, checksum: 6df9d771c65c6fa8d098e4e0aba88fb5 (MD5) / Neste trabalho estudamos os sistemas dinâmicos caóticos através da definição apresentada por Devaney, composta basicamente de três condições. Investigamos todas as implicações possíveis entre essas condições. Por fim, analisamos o estudo apresentando uma definição mais sucinta e provamos a sua equivalência com a apresentada por Devaney. / In this work we study the chaotic dynamic systems through the definition presented by Devaney, basically composed of three conditions. We investigate all the possible implications among these conditions. Finally, we finish the study presenting briefer definition and prove its equivalence to the one presented by Devaney.