Ce travail porte sur le développement d’une nouvelle technique expérimentale dédiée à l’étude de la rhéologie mise en jeux lors du glissement d’une pointe rigide sur une surface de polymère. Ce travail s'est déroulé progressivement de l'échelle mésoscopique vers l'échelle nanométrique. Pour cette dernière, la zone ciblée est la zone interfaciale confinée et cisaillée.Pour mettre en évidence les comportements de la zone cohésive, nous avons étudié un système de réseaux interpénétrés de polymères (RIPs) CR39-PMMA. Grâce à leurs propriétés ajustables, nous pourrons utiliser les RIPs sont utilisés comme substrat pour étudier la zone interfaciale en variant facilement les paramètres rhéologiques.Pour étudier les propriétés de la zone interfaciale, des couches phospholipidiques de DSPC ont été choisies comme matériau modèle. Leurs structures ont été étudiées par la réflectivité spéculaire de neutron. Nous montrons que la structure des couches supportées de DSPC est robuste, et le taux d’humidité́ relative joue un rôle important sur la structure. Les essais de glissement sur des couches de DSPC ont permis de relever les influences des paramètres mécaniques et environnementaux sur la contrainte de cisaillement Le développement du NanoTribo-FRAPP permet de caractériser le cisaillement des couches de DSPC sur une lame de verre, tout en mesurant la vitesse d’écoulement locale des couches moléculaires nanométriques. Nous pouvons ainsi estimer les plans de glissement en fonction de la vitesse. / This work deals with the development of a new experimental technique and its application to study the rheology of a highly confined and sheared interfacial zone involved in the sliding of a rigid tip on a polymer suface. This tribological work has been conducted gradually from the mesoscopic scale to the nanoscale.To highlight the behavior of the cohesive zone, we studied an interpenetrating polymer network system (INPs) CR39-PMMA. Thanks to their adjustable properties, we may use the INPs as a substrate to study the interfacial zone by easily varying the rheological parameters.To study the rheological properties in the interfacial zone, the phospholipid layers of DSPC have been chosen as model material. The structures have been studied by the neutron reflectivity experiments. We show that the structure of supported layers of DSPC is robust, and the relative humidity plays a key role on it. Sliding tests on the DSPC layers reveals the influences of mechanical and environmental parameters on the shear stress. The development of NanoTribo-FRAPP allows to characterize the shear conditions of DSPC layers, with the measurements of local velocity of these of nanoscale molecular layers. This gives us access to estimate the slip planes as a function of imposed velocity.

The ability to predict fatigue crack growth rates is essential in safety critical systems. The discovery of fatigue crack closure in 1970 caused a flourish of research in attempts to simulate this behaviour, which crucially affects crack growth rates. Historically, crack tip plasticity models have been based on one-dimensional rays of plasticity emanating from the crack tip, either co-linear with the crack (for the case of plane stress), or at a chosen angle in the plane of analysis (for plane strain). In this thesis, one such model for plane stress, developed to predict fatigue crack closure, has been refined. It is applied to a study of the relationship between the apparent stress intensity range (easily calculated using linear elastic fracture mechanics), and the true stress intensity range, which includes the effects of plasticity induced fatigue crack closure. Results are presented for all load cases for a finite crack in an infinite plane, and a method is demonstrated which allows the calculation of the true stress intensity range for a growing crack, based only on the apparent stress intensity range for a static crack. Although the yield criterion is satisfied along the plastic ray, these one-dimensional plasticity models violate the yield criterion in the area immediately surrounding the plasticity ray. An area plasticity model is therefore required in order to model the plasticity more accurately. This thesis develops such a model by distributing dislocations over an area. Use of the model reveals that current methods for incremental plasticity algorithms using distributed dislocations produce an over-constrained system, due to misleading assumptions concerning the normality condition. A method is presented which allows the system an extra degree of freedom; this requires the introduction of a parameter, derived using the Prandtl-Reuss flow rule, which relates the magnitude of slip on complementary shear planes. The method is applied to two problems, confirming its validity.