Yes / Tunnel maintenance requires complex decision making, which involves pathology diagnosis and risk assessment, to ensure full safety while optimising maintenance and repair costs. A Decision Support System (DSS) can play a key role in this process by supporting the decision makers in identifying pathologies based on disorders present in various tunnel portions and contextual factors affecting a tunnel. Another key aspect is to identify which spatial stretches within a tunnel contain pathologies of similar kinds within neighbouring tunnel segments. This paper presents PADTUN, a novel intelligent decision support system that assists with pathology diagnosis and assessment of tunnels with respect to their disorders and diagnosis influencing factors. It utilises semantic web technologies for knowledge capture, representation, and reasoning. The core of PADTUN is a family of ontologies which represent the main concepts and relations associated with pathology assessment, and capture the decision process concerning tunnel maintenance. Tunnel inspection data is linked to these ontologies to take advantage of inference capabilities offered by semantic technologies. In addition, an intelligent mechanism is presented which exploits abstraction and inference capabilities. Thus PADTUN provides the world’s first semantically based intelligent DSS for tunnel maintenance. PADTUN was developed by an interdisciplinary team of tunnel experts and knowledge engineers in real-world settings offered by the NeTTUN EU Project. An evaluation of the PADTUN system is performed using real-world tunnel data and diagnosis tasks. We show how the use of semantic technologies allows addressing the complex issues of tunnel pathology inferencing, aiding in, and matching transportation experts’ expectations of decision support. The methodology is applicable to any linear transport structures, offering intelligent ways to aid with complex decision processes related to diagnosis and maintenance. / This work was part of the NeTTUN project, funded by the EC 7th Framework under Grant Agreement 280712.

En physique du transport, en particulier en physique du transfert radiatif, la méthode de Monte-Carlo a été développée à l'origine comme la simulation de l'histoire d'un grand nombre de particules, dont on déduit des observables moyennes. Cette méthode numérique doit son succès à plusieurs qualités : une gestion naturelle des espaces des phases aux nombreuses dimensions, une erreur systématique nulle par rapport au modèle physico-mathématique, les intervalles de confiance donnés avec les résultats, une capacité à prendre en compte simultanément de nombreux phénomènes physiques, la possibilité de calcul de sensibilités simultané, et une parallélisation aisée. En cinétique des gaz, les particules collisionnent entre elles et non pas avec un milieu extérieur ; on dit que leur transport est non-linéaire. Ces collisions mutuelles mettent en défaut l'approche évoquée ci-dessus de la méthode de Monte-Carlo ; car pour simuler des trajectoires indépendantes de multiples particules et ainsi estimer leur distribution, il faut connaître au préalable exactement cette même distribution...Cette thèse fait suite à celles de Jérémi DAUCHET (2012) et de Mathieu GALTIER (2014), consacrées au transfert radiatif. Entre autres travaux, ces auteurs montraient comment la méthode de Monte-Carlo peut s'accommoder de non-linéarités, en gardant son formalisme et ses spécificités habituelles. Les non-linéarités alors franchies étaient respectivement une loi de couplage chimie/luminance, et la dépendance de la luminance envers le coefficient d'absorption. On essaie dans ce manuscrit d'outrepasser la non-linéarité du transport. Pour cela, nos principaux outils sont un suivi des particules en remontant le temps, basé sur des formulations intégrales des équations de transport, formulations largement inspirées des algorithmes dits à collisions nulles. Nous montrons, sur plusieurs exemples académiques, que nous avons en effet étendu la méthode de Monte-Carlo à la résolution de l'équation de Boltzmann. Ces exemples sont aussi l'occasion de tester les limites de ce que nous avons mis en place. Les résultats les plus marquants sont certainement l'absence totale de maillage dans la méthode numérique, ainsi que sa capacité à calculer correctement les quantités de particules de haute énergie cinétique (toujours peu nombreuses par rapport au total, en cinétique des gaz). Au-delà des exemples fournis, ce manuscrit est voulu comme un essai de formalisme et une exploration des bases de la méthode développée. L'accent est mis sur les raisonnements menant à la mise au point de la méthode, plutôt que sur les implémentations particulières qui ont été abouties. La méthode est encore, aux yeux de l'auteur, largement susceptible d'être retravaillée. En particulier, les temps maximaux sur lesquels l'évolution des particules est calculable, qui constituent la faiblesse principale de la méthode numérique développée, peuvent sûrement être augmentés. / In transport physics, especially in radiative transfer physics, the Monte-Carlo method has been originally developed as the simulation of the history of numerous particles, from which are deduced mean observables. This numerical method owes its success to several qualities : a natural management of many-dimensional phase space, a null systematic error away from the mathematical and physical model, the confidence intervals given with the results, an ability to take into account simultaneously numerous physical phenomenons, the simultaneous sensitivities calculating possibility, and an easy parallelization. In gas kinetics, particles collide each other, not with an external fixed medium ; it is said that their transport is non-linear. These mutual collisions put out of action the aforesaid approach of the Monte-Carlo method ; because in order to simulate the independent trajectories of multiple particles and thus estimate their distribution, this distribution must beforehand be exactly known...This thesis follows on from those of Jérémy DAUCHET (2012) and of Mathieu GALTIER (2014), dedicated to radiative transfer physics. Between other works, these authors have shown how the Monte-Carlo method can bear non-linearities, while keeping its customary formalism and specificities. The then overcome non-linearities were respectively a chemistry/irradiance coupling law, and the dependence of the irradiance toward the absorption coefficient. We try in this manuscript to overcome the non-linearity of the transport. In this aim, our main tools are a reverse following of particles, based on integral formulations of the transport equations, formulations largely inspired from the so-called null collisions algorithms. We show, on several academic examples, that we have indeed extended the Monte Carlo method to the resolution of the Boltzmann equation. These examples are also occasions to test the limits of what we have built. The most noteworthy results are certainly the absence of any mesh in the numerical method, and its capacity to calculate correctly the high-speed particles quantities (always rare compared to the total, in gas kinetics). Beyond the given examples, this manuscript is wanted as a formalism attempt and an exploration of the developed method basics. The focus is made on the reasoning leading to the method, rather than on particular implementations which have been realized. In the eyes of the author, the method is still largely reworkable. In particular, the maximal times on which the evolution of particles is computable, which constitute the main weakness of the developed numerical method, can surely be increased.

La fusion thermonucléaire est l'une des candidates favorites a la production d'énergie au courant de ce siècle. Parmi les défi que nous pose cette discipline, on note la turbulence au bord des machine de fusion et l'interaction plasma paroi. En effet nous avons montre que les fluctuations turbulentes affectent le transport des particules neutres et le rayonnement qui leur est associe. En particulier, sont affectes les neutres lents (dont le libre parcours moyen est de l'ordre de la longueur de corrélation des fluctuations), comme les molécules et les atomes d´impuretés pulvérises a la parois. Cette conclusion nous a conduit a inclure ces fluctuations dans le code de transport EIRENE utilise pour le dimensionnement de la machine ITER. Il a aussi été montre qu'en moyenne les fluctuations favorisent la pénétration des neutres dans le plasma. / Edge plasma of tokamaks manifests high level of fluctuations amplitude (>50%). It has been demonstrated that such a fluctuations affect significantly the transport of neutral particles, and in particular the slow particles as molecules and sputtered impurities. That is their penetration depth in the plasma is enhanced in the average. Then turbulent fluctuations are now implemented in the monte carlo transport code EIRENE used for the design of ITER.

This work develops a discontinuous Galerkin finite element discretization of non- linear hyperbolic conservation equations with efficient and robust high order stabilization built on an entropy-based artificial viscosity approximation. The solutions of equations are represented by elementwise polynomials of an arbitrary degree p > 0 which are continuous within each element but discontinuous on the boundaries. The discretization of equations in time is done by means of high order explicit Runge-Kutta methods identified with respective Butcher tableaux. To stabilize a numerical solution in the vicinity of shock waves and simultaneously preserve the smooth parts from smearing, we add some reasonable amount of artificial viscosity in accordance with the physical principle of entropy production in the interior of shock waves. The viscosity coefficient is proportional to the local size of the residual of an entropy equation and is bounded from above by the first-order artificial viscosity defined by a local wave speed. Since the residual of an entropy equation is supposed to be vanishingly small in smooth regions (of the order of the Local Truncation Error) and arbitrarily large in shocks, the entropy viscosity is almost zero everywhere except the shocks, where it reaches the first-order upper bound. One- and two-dimensional benchmark test cases are presented for nonlinear hyperbolic scalar conservation laws and the system of compressible Euler equations. These tests demonstrate the satisfactory stability properties of the method and optimal convergence rates as well. All numerical solutions to the test problems agree well with the reference solutions found in the literature. We conclude that the new method developed in the present work is a valuable alternative to currently existing techniques of viscous stabilization.