In this thesis we describe how to estimate the distance spanned in the pants graph by a train track splitting sequence on a surface, up to multiplicative and additive constants. If some moderate assumptions on a splitting sequence are satisfied, each vertex set of a train track in it will represent a vertex of a graph which is naturally quasi-isometric to the pants graph; moreover the splitting sequence gives an edge-path in this graph so, more precisely, our distance estimate holds between the extreme points of this path. The present distance estimate is inspired by a result of Masur, Mosher and Schleimer for distances in the marking graph. However, we can apply their line of proof only after some manipulation of the splitting sequence: a rearrangement, changing the order the elementary moves are performed in, so that the ones producing Dehn twists are brought together; and then an untwisting, which suppresses the majority of these latter moves to give a new sequence, which does not end with the same track as before, but does not include any portion that is almost stationary in the pants graph. The required distance is then, up to constants, the number of splits occurring in the untwisted sequence. A consequence of our main theorem together with a result of Brock is that, given a pseudo-Anosov self-diffeomorphism ψ of a surface S, the maximal splitting sequence introduced by Agol gives us an estimate for the hyperbolic volume of the mapping torus built from S and ψ. There are also some interesting consequences for the hyperbolic volume of a solid torus minus a closed braid, via a machinery employed by Dynnikov and Wiest.

On étudie les feuilletages transversalement affines des surfaces compactes, avec ou sans bord. On met en relation plusieurs méthodes de construction de tels feuilletages: application de premier retour et échanges d'intervalles affines (pour un feuilletage pas nécessairement orientable) ; mesure brisée sur un réseau ferroviaire; feuilletage mesuré sur le revêtement universel avec automorphismes du revêtement agissant de manière affine ; recollement le long de leur bord de surfaces munies de feuilletages affines. On étudie l'injectivité des applications à image dans l'espace des classes d'équivalence des feuilletages transversalement affines qui résultent de ces diverses constructions. / We study the affine foliations on a compact surface in both cases : with a boundary and without a boundary. We connect between several ways of constructing these foliations. These ways are the first return map, the affine interval exchange (for a foliation which is not necessarily orientable), the train tracks with broken measures, the gluing affine foliations on surface with boundary, and the measured foliation on the universal covering with covering translation acting in affine ways. We study the injectivity of the applications with image in the space of equivalence classes of affine foliations which result from these various constructions.