Cette thèse est divisée en trois parties. Dans la première partie, nous commençons par décrire des résultats très connus en théorie du contrôle géométrique tels que le théorème de Chow-Rashevsky, la condition de rang de Kalman, l'application Entrée-Sortie et le test linéaire. De plus, nous définissons et nous étudions brièvement la contrôlabilité locale au voisinage d'un contrôle de référence au premier et au second ordre. Dans la deuxième partie, nous donnons une preuve élémentaire du lemme de Franks linéaire pour les flots géodésiques qui utilise des techniques basiques de théorie du contrôle géométrique. Dans la dernière partie, étant donnée une variété Riemanienne compacte, nous prouvons un lemme de Franks uniforme au second ordre pour les flots géodésiques et on applique le résultat à la théorie de la persistance. Dans cette partie, nous introduisons avec plus de détails les notions de contrôlabilité locale au premier et au second ordre. En effet, nous donnons un résultat de contrôlabilité au second ordre dont la preuve est longue et technique. / This thesis is devided into three parts. In the first part we begin by describing some well known results in geometric control theory such as the Chow Rashevsky Theorem, the Kalman rank condition, the End-Point Mapping and the linear test. Moreover, we define and study briefly local controllability around a reference control at first and second order. In the second part we provide an elementary proof of the Franks lemma for geodesic flows using basic tools of geometric control theory. In the last part, given a compact Riemannian manifold, we prove a uniform Franks' lemma at second order for geodesic flows and apply the result in persistence theory. In this part we introduce with more details notions of local controllability at first and second order. In fact, we provide a second order controllability result whose proof is long and technical.

Heavy oil production depends on the understanding of mechanical and flow properties of unconsolidated or weakly consolidated sands under different loading paths and boundary conditions. Reconstituted bitumen-free Athabasca oil-sands samples were used to investigate the geomechanics of a steam injection process such as the Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). Four stress paths have been studied in this work: triaxial compression, radial extension, pore pressure increase and isotropic compression. Absolute permeability, end-point relative permeability to oil & water (kro and krw), initial water saturation and residual oil saturation were measured while the samples deformed. Triaxial compression is a stress path of increasing mean stress while radial extension and pore pressure increase lead to decreasing mean stress. Pore pressure increase experiments were carried out for three initial states: equal axial and confining stresses, axial stress greater than confining stress and confining stress greater than axial stress. Pore pressure was increased under four boundary conditions: 1) constant axial and confining stress; 2) constant axial stress and zero radial strain; 3) zero axial strain and constant confining stress; and 4) zero axial and radial strain. These experiments were designed to mimic geologic conditions where vertical stress was either S1 or S3, the lateral boundary conditions were either zero strain or constant stress, and the vertical boundary conditions were either zero strain or constant stress. Triaxial compression caused a decrease in permeability as the sample compacted, followed by appreciable permeability enhancement during sample dilation. Radial extension led to sample dilation, shear failure and permeability increase from the beginning. The krw and kro increased by 40% and 15% post-compaction respectively for the samples corresponding to lower depths during triaxial compression. For these samples, residual oil saturation decreased by as much as 40%. For radial extension, the permeability enhancement decreased with depth and ranged from 20% to 50% while the residual oil saturation decreased by up to 55%. For both stress paths, more shear-enhanced permeability was observed for samples tested at lower pressures, implying that permeability enhancement is higher for shallower sands. The pore pressure increase experiments showed an increase of only 0-10% in absolute permeability except when the effective stress became close to zero. This could possibly have occurred due to steady state flow not being reached during absolute permeability measurement. The krw curves generally increased as the pore pressure was increased from 0 psi. The increase ranged from 5% to 44% for the different boundary conditions and differential stresses. The kro curves also showed an increasing trend for most of the cases. The residual oil saturation decreased by 40-60% for samples corresponding to shallow depths while it increased by 0-10% for samples corresponding to greater depths. The reservoirs with high differential stress are more conducive to favorable changes in permeability and residual oil saturation. These results suggested that a decreasing mean stress path is more beneficial for production increase than an increasing mean stress path. The unconsolidated sands are over-consolidated because of previous ice loading which makes the sand matrix stiffer. In this work, it was found that over-consolidation, as expected, decreased the porosity and permeability (40-50%) and increased the Young’s and bulk moduli of the sand. The result is sand which failed at higher than expected stress during triaxial compression. Overall, results show that lab experiments support increased permeability due to steam injection operations in heavy oil, and more importantly, the observed reduction in residual oil saturation implies SAGD induced deformation should improve recovery factors. / text

A novel technique for measuring gas temperature and spectral particle emissivity in high-temperature gas-particle streams is presented. The main application of this optical sensor is to improve the process control of batch unit operations, such as steelmaking furnaces. The spectral emission profile of CO and CO2 and the continuous particle emission in the 3.5 to 5 μm wavelength region was recorded and analyzed in real time with a low-resolution passive sensor. The sensor consisted of light collecting optics, a dispersion element (grating spectrometer) and a 64-pixel pyroelectric array. Wavelength and radiance calibrations were performed. The temperature of the gas-particle medium (Tg+p) followed from the least-squares minimization of the difference between the measured radiance in the 4.56-4.7 μm region –which saturates due to the large CO2 concentrations and path lengths in industrial furnaces– and the corresponding blackbody radiance. Particle emissivity (εp) was calculated at 3.95 μm from an asymptotic approximation of the Radiative Transfer Equation that yields the emerging radiance from a semi-infinite particle cloud. The major source of error in the magnitude of Tg+p and εp could come from particle scattering. Through the method of embedded invariance an expression was developed to estimate the lowering effect of particle size and volume fraction on the saturation of the 4.56-4.7 μm CO2 emission region. An iterative procedure for correcting the values of the gas-particle temperature and particle emissivity was applied to the datasets from the two industrial tests. Results from the measurement campaigns with the infrared sensor prototype at two full-scale furnaces are presented. A proof-of-concept test at a coal-fired boiler for electricity production was followed by more extensive measurements at a Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) for steelmaking. The second test provided temperature and particle emissivity profiles for eight heats, which highlighted the simplicity of the technique in obtaining in-situ measurements for modeling studies. Through the analysis of the particle emissivity profile in the BOF and the definition of a new variable –the minimum carbon time– a novel end-point strategy to stop the injection of high-purity oxygen during low-carbon heats in BOF converters was proposed.

A novel technique for measuring gas temperature and spectral particle emissivity in high-temperature gas-particle streams is presented. The main application of this optical sensor is to improve the process control of batch unit operations, such as steelmaking furnaces. The spectral emission profile of CO and CO2 and the continuous particle emission in the 3.5 to 5 μm wavelength region was recorded and analyzed in real time with a low-resolution passive sensor. The sensor consisted of light collecting optics, a dispersion element (grating spectrometer) and a 64-pixel pyroelectric array. Wavelength and radiance calibrations were performed. The temperature of the gas-particle medium (Tg+p) followed from the least-squares minimization of the difference between the measured radiance in the 4.56-4.7 μm region –which saturates due to the large CO2 concentrations and path lengths in industrial furnaces– and the corresponding blackbody radiance. Particle emissivity (εp) was calculated at 3.95 μm from an asymptotic approximation of the Radiative Transfer Equation that yields the emerging radiance from a semi-infinite particle cloud. The major source of error in the magnitude of Tg+p and εp could come from particle scattering. Through the method of embedded invariance an expression was developed to estimate the lowering effect of particle size and volume fraction on the saturation of the 4.56-4.7 μm CO2 emission region. An iterative procedure for correcting the values of the gas-particle temperature and particle emissivity was applied to the datasets from the two industrial tests. Results from the measurement campaigns with the infrared sensor prototype at two full-scale furnaces are presented. A proof-of-concept test at a coal-fired boiler for electricity production was followed by more extensive measurements at a Basic Oxygen Furnace (BOF) for steelmaking. The second test provided temperature and particle emissivity profiles for eight heats, which highlighted the simplicity of the technique in obtaining in-situ measurements for modeling studies. Through the analysis of the particle emissivity profile in the BOF and the definition of a new variable –the minimum carbon time– a novel end-point strategy to stop the injection of high-purity oxygen during low-carbon heats in BOF converters was proposed.

Les modèles effectifs de type Nambu—Jona-Lasinio (NJL) peuvent être utilisés pour étudier les phases à densité et température finies de la chromodynamique quantique (QCD). Alors que les prédictions de ces modèles effectifs peuvent être comparées avec les résultats sur réseaux aux faibles densités, un tel garde-fou n'existe pas à plus haute densité où la discrétisation fait face à un problème de signe sévère. Dans cette thèse nous proposons une méthode systématique permettant de calculer la stabilité d'une prédiction par rapport aux données d'entrée du modèle. De cette manière un critère quantitatif est fabriqué permettant d'évaluer le pouvoir prédictif d'un modèle. La discussion est principalement orientée sur le point critique chiral.Enfin les phases très hautes densités, telles que pouvant exister à l'intérieur des étoiles compactes, sont abordées et la superconductivité de couleur est discutée dans le cadre des modèles NJL / Nambu--Jona-Lasinio models can be used to study finite density and finite temperature quantum chromodynamics phases. Finite temperature and low density predictions of these models can be compared to lattice results. Such a comparison is not possible at larger density because of the so called sign problem. In this thesis the proposed systematic method allows to compute the stability of a prediction with respect to the inputs of the model. In this way a quantitative criterium is constructed which can be used to evaluate the predictive power of the studied model. Finally the high density phases which can exist in the interior of compact stellar objects are discussed along with color superconductivity in NJL type models