This thesis presents a series of studies of quenched random disorder (QRD) on liquid crystals. We have used high-resolution AC-Calorimetry, high-resolution X-Ray Diffraction (XRD), X-Ray Intensity Fluctuation Spectroscopy (XIFS), Turbidity, Integrated Low-Angle Light Scattering (ILALS), as well as Polarizing Microscopy to characterize the effects of a nano-colloidal dispersions of aerosils in the phase transitions of several liquid crystals. The aerosil ($SIL$) is made of 70~AA~ diameter SiO$_{2}$ particles coated with hydroxyl (-OH) groups. The coating allows the $SIL$ particles to hydrogen-bond together, to form a very low density gel in an organic solvent. This provides the quenched random disorder. The liquid crystals of interest are: octyloxycyanobiphenyl ($8OCB$), 4-extit{n}-pentylphenylthiol-4'-extit{n}-octyloxybenzoate (ar{8}$S5), 4'-transbutyl-4-cyano-4-heptyl-bicyclohexane ($CCN47$), and octylcyanobiphenyl ($8CB$). Studies have been carried out as a function of aerosil concentration and temperature spanning the following phase transitions, Isotropic to Nematic (emph{I-N}), nematic to smectic-emph{A} (emph{N-SmA}), smectic-emph{A} to smectic-emph{C} (emph{SmA-SmC}), and crystallization.

A textura de uma imagem apresenta informações importantes sobre as características de um objeto. Usar essa informação para reconhecimento de padrões vem sendo uma tarefa bastante pesquisada na área de processamento de imagens e aplicado em atividades como indústria têxtil, biologia, análise de imagens médicas, imagens de satélite, análise de peças industriais, entre outros. Muitos pesquisadores focam em criar mecanismos que convertam a imagem em um vetor de características a fim de utilizar um classificador sobre esse vetores. No entanto, as imagens podem ser transformadas para que que características peculiares sejam evidenciadas fazendo com que extratores de características já existentes explorem melhor as imagens. Esse trabalho tem como objetivo estudar a influência da aplicação de métodos de pré-processamento em imagens de textura para a posterior análise das imagens. Os métodos escolhidos são seis: difusão isotrópica, difusão anisotrópica clássica, dois métodos de regularização da difusão anisotrópica, um método de difusão morfológica e a transformada de distância. Além disso, os métodos foram aliados a sete descritores já conhecidos da literatura para que as características das imagens tranformadas sejam extraídas. Resultados mostram um aumento significativo no desempenho dos classificadores KNN e Naive Bayes quando utilizados nas imagens transformadas de quatro bases de textura: Brodatz, Outex, Usptex e Vistex. / The texture of an image plays an important source of information of the image content. The use of this information to pattern recognition became very popular in image processing area and has applications such in textile industry, biology, medical image analysis, satelite images analysis, industrial equipaments analysis, among others. Many researchers focus on creating different methods to convert the input image to a feature vector to the able to classify the image based on these vectors. However, images can be modified in different ways such that important features are enhanced. Therefore, descriptors are able to extract features easily to perform a better representation of the image. This project aims to apply six different preprocessing methods to analyze their power of enhancement on the texture extraction. The methods are: isotropic diffusion, the classic anisotropic diffusion, two regularizations of the anisotropic diffusion, a morphologic diffusion and the distance transform. To extract the features of these modified images, seven texture analysis algorithms are used along KNN and Naive Bayes to classify the textures. Results show a significant increase when datasets Brodatz, Vistex, Usptex and Outex are transformed prior to texture analysis and classification.

La propagation de flammes turbulentes dans des milieux réactifs inhomogènes concerne un grand nombre d’applications pratiques, y compris celles qui reposent sur des cycles de combustion à volume constant. Les hétérogénéités de composition (richesse, température,dilution par des gaz brûlés, etc.) sont issues de plusieurs facteurs distincts tels que la dispersion du spray de gouttelettes de combustible et son évaporation, la topologie de l’écoulement ainsi que la présence éventuelle de gaz brûlés résiduels issus du cycle précédent. La structure des flammes partiellement prémélangées qui en résultent est significativement plus complexe que celles des flammes plus classiques de diffusion ou de prémélange. L’objectif de ce travail de thèse est donc de contribuer à l’amélioration de leur connaissance, en s’appuyant sur la génération et l’analyse de base de données de simulations numériques directes ou DNS (Direct Numerical Simulation). Celles-ci sont conduites avec le code de calcul Asphodele qui est basé sur l’approximation de faible nombre de Mach. Le combustible de référence retenu est l’iso-octane.La base de données est structurée suivant cinq paramètres qui permettent de caractériser l’écoulement turbulent ainsi que l’hétérogénéité de composition du milieu réactif. Dans un premier temps, des configurations bidimensionnelles ont été considérées en raison du coût élevé induit par la description détaillée de la cinétique chimique. L’étude des ces différents cas de calcul a permis de mettre en lumière plusieurs mécanismes fondamentaux de propagation dans les milieux hétérogènes en composition. Une réduction significative des coûts de calcula pu ensuite être obtenue grâce au développement d’un modèle chimique simplifié optimisé.Son utilisation a permis d’étendre les analyses à de / The propagation of turbulent flames in non-homogeneous reactive mixtures of reactants concerns a large number of practical applications, including those based on constant volume combustion cycles. The composition heterogeneities (equivalence ratio, temperature, dilution by burnt gases, etc.) result from several distinct factors such as the dispersion of the spray of fuel droplets and its evaporation, the flow field topology as well as the possible presence of residual burnt gases issued from the previous cycle. The resulting partially premixed flames structure is significantly more complex than the one of more conventional diffusion or premixed flames.The aim of this thesis work is therefore to contribute to the improvement of their understanding, by proceeding to the generation and analysis of a new set of direct numerical simulations (DNS) databases. The present computations are performed with the low-Mach number DNS solver Asphodele. The database is structured according to five parameters that characterize the turbulent flow as well as the composition heterogeneity of the reactive mixture. First, because of the high numerical costs induced by the detailed description of chemical kinetics, two-dimensional configurations were considered. The study of these various simulations highlights several fundamental mechanisms of flame propagation in heterogeneous mixtures. Then, a significant computational cost saving has been achieved through the development of an optimized simplified chemistry model. The use of the latter allowed to overcome the major bottleneck of high CPU costs related to chemical kinetics description and thus to extend the analysis to three-dimensional configurations. Some of the conclusions obtained previously were reinforced.

<p>The usage of automatic fingerprint identification systems as a means of identification and/or verification have increased substantially during the last couple of years. It is well known that small deviations may occur within a fingerprint over time, a problem referred to as template ageing. This problem, and other reasons for deviations between two images of the same fingerprint, complicates the identification/verification process, since distinct features may appear somewhat different in the two images that are matched. Commonly used to try and minimise this type of problem are different kinds of fingerprint image enhancement algorithms. This thesis tests different methods within the scale-space framework and evaluate their performance as fingerprint image enhancement methods. </p><p>The methods tested within this thesis ranges from linear scale-space filtering, where no prior information about the images is known, to scalar and tensor driven diffusion where analysis of the images precedes and controls the diffusion process. </p><p>The linear scale-space approach is shown to improve correlation values, which was anticipated since the image structure is flattened at coarser scales. There is however no increase in the number of accurate matches, since inaccurate features also tends to get higher correlation value at large scales. </p><p>The nonlinear isotropic scale-space (scalar dependent diffusion), or the edge- preservation, approach is proven to be an ill fit method for fingerprint image enhancement. This is due to the fact that the analysis of edges may be unreliable, since edge structure is often distorted in fingerprints affected by the template ageing problem. </p><p>The nonlinear anisotropic scale-space (tensor dependent diffusion), or coherence-enhancing, method does not give any overall improvements of the number of accurate matches. It is however shown that for a certain type of template ageing problem, where the deviating structure does not significantly affect the ridge orientation, the nonlinear anisotropic diffusion is able to accurately match correlation pairs that resulted in a false match before they were enhanced.</p>

Terahertz time-domain spectroscopy systems were developed and used for the anaylsis and characterization of various materials. By using ultra-fast Ti:Sapphire and Er-doped fiber lasers, terahertz time-domain spectrometers of different configurations were constructed and tested. To increase the accuracy and sensitivity of the measurements, the systems were optimized for spectroscopic analysis. MBE grown nominally undoped epitaxial GaAs samples were used for the spectroscopic measurements. These samples were first charactrized by electrical measurements in order to check the accuracy of the terahertz time-domain experiments. We have shown that the terahertz time-domin spectroscopic techniques provides a quick way of the determining the real ( ) and complex () components of the refractive index of material. In addition, we have investigated the photoexcitation dynamics of these GaAs samples. We have demonstrated that direct and photoexcited terahertz time-domain measurements give an estimate of the carrier densities and both the hole and electron mobility values with good precision. rnin An algorithm is developed to prevent the unwanted Fabry-Perot reflections which is commonly encountered in Terahertz Spectroscopy systems. We have performed terahertz time-domain transmission measurements on ZnTe &lt / 110&gt / crystals of various thicknesses to test the applicability of this algorithm. We have shown that the algorithm developed provides a quick way of eliminating the &ldquo / etalon&rdquo / reflections from the data. In addition, it is also shown that these &ldquo / etalon&rdquo / effects can be used for the frequency calibration of terahertz time-domain spectrometers.

Stoichiometric polyelectrolyte-surfactant complexes represent a type of comb-shaped polymers, in which every polymer chain unit has an electrostatically bound &amp;quot;side chain&amp;quot;. These complexes are water-insoluble. In the solid state they assemble spontaneously into mesogenic structures. The [X,Y]-ionenes ([(CH2)XN+(CH3)2(CH2)YN+(CH3)2]nBr-2n) investigated formed stoichiometric complexes with alkyl sulfates. The ionene alkyl sulfate complexes display mesogenicity, i.e. optically isotropic dry complexes underwent lyotropic and thermotropic phase transitions to the optically anisotropic phase (and vice versa) under controlled relative humidity. The optically anisotropic phases exhibited hexagonal textures as revealed by polarizing microscopy. A new feature is the lyotropic transition brought about by the uptake of water through the gas phase. The complexes were all sensitive to both humidity and temperature. In principle, the effects can be applied to measure humidity.

This study focused on experimentally determining the cooling performance of a fully cooled, scaled-up model of a C3X turbine vane. The primary objective was to determine the differences in overall effectiveness in the presence and absence of a hot mainstream flowing over the vane. Overall effectiveness was measured using a thermally scaled matched Biot number vane with an impingement plate providing the internal cooling. This is the first study focused on investigating the effect of removing the mainstream flow and comparing the contour and laterally-averaged effectiveness data in support of the development of an assembly line thermal testing method. It was found that the proposed method of factory floor testing of turbine component cooling performance did not provide comparable information to traditional overall effectiveness test methods. A second experiment was performed in which the effect of altering the angle of attack of a flow into a passive turbulence generator was investigated. Measurements in the approach flow were taken using a single wire hot-wire anemometer. This study was the first to investigate the effects such a setup would have on fluctuating flow quantitates such as turbulence intensity and integral length scale rather than simply the mean quantities. It was found that both the downstream turbulence intensity and the turbulence integral length scale increase monotonically with approach flow incidence angle at a specified distance downstream of the turbulence generator. / text

La régulation des polluants a mené à la création de nouveaux systèmes de combustion. Le carburant étant stocké sous forme liquide, sa transformation jusqu’à sa combustion est complexe. La capacité de la Simulation aux grandes échelles à simuler des écoulements turbulents réactifs a été montrée sur des cas académiques comme sur des configurations industrielles, tout en prenant en compte les phénomènes multiphysiques intervenant dans ces configurations, mais les études sur la structure de flamme diphasique sont encore trop peu nombreuses. La présence de deux solveurs pour la simulation d’une phase liquide étant disponible dans le code AVBP, leur utilisation permet une comparaison et une compréhension des phénomènes en jeu combinant dispersion, évaporation, et combustion. La première partie de l’étude relate la validation du modèle d’injection FIM-UR. Ce modèle est capable de reconstruire les profils de vitesses et de granulométrie à l’injecteur sans avoir à simuler les phénomènes d’atomisation primaire et secondaire. Une validation en régime turbulent avait déjà été réalisée, et on propose ici de valider le modèle dans un cas laminaire. Des comparaisons entre simulations monodisperses et polydisperse et des expériences sont effectuées. La simulation monodisperse Lagrangienne donne une bonne structure globale mais la simulation polydisperse Lagrangienne permet de retrouver le comportement au centre du cône avec la présence des petites gouttes et à la périphérie du cône par la présence des grosses gouttes. De plus, des améliorations sont apportées au modèle pour le formalisme Eulérien et montrent de bons résultats. La partie suivante s’intéresse à caractériser un spray polydisperse par une distribution monodisperse. En effet, au cas où une approche polydisperse n’est pas possible, le choix du diamètre moyen à prendre pour une simulation monodisperse est délicat. On propose donc d’analyser le comportement d’un spray polydisperse en le comparant à ceux de sprays monodisperses. Deux configurations académiques sont choisies : des cas de Turbulence Homogène Isotrope chargée en particules pour étudier la dynamique, et des calculs d’évaporation 0D. Trois paramètres sont étudiés pour la dynamique : la concentration préférentielle (ou ségrégation), la traînée moyenne et la traînée réduite moyenne. Cette dernière et la ségrégation de la distribution polydisperse semblent affectées par les tailles de goutte les plus faibles, et la concentration préférentielle apparait alors comme la moyenne des ségrégations des classes qui la composent pondérées par l’inverse du nombre de Stokes associé à chacune de ces classes. La traînée moyenne de la simulation polydisperse possède un comportement proche des diamètres moyens D10 et D20. Ces analyses nous poussent donc à choisir le D10 pour caractériser la dynamique d’un spray polydisperse. Les calculs d’évaporation 0D ne permettent pas dans un premier temps de caractériser efficacement la masse évaporée d’un spray polydisperse par celle d’un spray monodisperse équivalent, mais la définition de nouveaux diamètres issus de la littérature des lits fluidisés comme le D50% le permet, ce qui le place autour du D32. On propose donc de caractériser l’évaporation d’un spray polydisperse par ce diamètre. Enfin, la dernière partie étudie la structure de flamme diphasique dans la chambre MERCATO, à l’aide du formalisme Lagrangien, monodisperse et polydisperse, mais aussi en utilisant le formalisme Eulérien. La validation du modèle FIM-UR du premier chapitre et ses améliorations sont utilisées pour représenter les conditions d’injection liquide. En plus d’un calcul polydisperse, deux simulations monodisperses Lagrangiennes sont réalisées en prenant les diamètres moyens D10 et D32, suite à la partie précédente. Des comparaisons qualitatives et des validations sont réalisées, en comparant des profils de vitesses gazeuses axiale et fluctuante et vitesse axiale liquide issus de l’expérience. / Regulations on pollutants have led to the creation of new combustion systems. Giving that fuel is stored in a liquid form, its evolution until combustion is complex. The ability of Large Eddy Simulation has been demonstrated on academic cases, as well as on industrial configurations, by taking into account the multi-physics phenomena, but there is a lack of studies about two-phase flow flame structures. Two solvers for the simulation of two-phase flows are available in the AVBP code, hence both simulations are performed to compare and increase understanding of the phenomena involved such as dispersion, evaporation and combustion. The first part of the study focuses on the validation of the FIM-UR injection model. This model is able to build velocity and droplet profiles at the injector, without simulating primary and secondary break up. A validation in a turbulent case has already been done, and this study validates the model in a laminar case. Comparisons between monodisperse and polydisperse simulations, and experiments are performed. The monodisperse Lagrangian simulation shows good results but the polydisperse simulation is able to represent profiles in the center of the cone by small droplets and at the peripheral part of the cone, by big ones. Moreover, improvements in the Eulerian model exhibit good results. The next section tries to evaluate the impact of polydispersion. Indeed, when a polydisperse approach is not available, choosing the mean diameter can be tricky. A comparison between the behavior of polydisperse spray and monodisperse sprays ones is realised. Two academic cases are studied: Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence with particles to analyze the dynamics, and 0D evaporation cases. For the dynamics, preferential concentration, mean drag and reduced mean drag are studied. The latter and preferential concentration are affected by small droplets, and the preferential concentration of a polydisperse spray is equivalent to the average of preferential concentration of classes, extracted from the polydisperse distribution, weighted by the inverse of the Stokes number of each class. The mean drag behaves like the D10 and D20 mean drags. This analysis allows us to choose the D10 to characterize a polydisperse distribution for the dynamics. Zero-D evaporation simulations cannot characterize the polydisperse spray evaporated mass by the evaporated mass of monodisperses sprays. New definitions of diameters from fluidized bed literature enable the use of D50%, which is close to D32. We propose to use this diameter to characterize the evaporation of a polydisperse spray. Finally, the last section studies the structure of two-phase flames in the MERCATO bench, using the Lagrangian formalism, monodisperse and polydisperse but also using the Eulerian formalism. The validation of FIM-UR model and improvements from the first section are used to represent liquid injection conditions. A polydisperse simulation is realized and two monodisperse simulations are computed using mean diameters D10 and D32, thanks to the previous section. Qualitative comparisons and validations are realized, comparing gaseous velocity profiles and liquid velocity profiles. Good agreements are found and the mean diameter D32 seems to be close to the polydisperse spray. A comparison between mean flames is done with an Abel transform of the flame from the experiments. The flame has an "M shape", anchored by small recirculation zones out of the swirler, and by a point at the tip of the central recirculation zone. Then, the impact of droplet distributions is analyzed. Even if few bigger droplets from the polydisperse distribution are convected in the hot gases due to bigger particular time and evaporation time, two-phase flow flame structures are equivalent. Different combustion regimes appeared with premixed flames and pockets of fuel burning in the hot gases.

The usage of automatic fingerprint identification systems as a means of identification and/or verification have increased substantially during the last couple of years. It is well known that small deviations may occur within a fingerprint over time, a problem referred to as template ageing. This problem, and other reasons for deviations between two images of the same fingerprint, complicates the identification/verification process, since distinct features may appear somewhat different in the two images that are matched. Commonly used to try and minimise this type of problem are different kinds of fingerprint image enhancement algorithms. This thesis tests different methods within the scale-space framework and evaluate their performance as fingerprint image enhancement methods. The methods tested within this thesis ranges from linear scale-space filtering, where no prior information about the images is known, to scalar and tensor driven diffusion where analysis of the images precedes and controls the diffusion process. The linear scale-space approach is shown to improve correlation values, which was anticipated since the image structure is flattened at coarser scales. There is however no increase in the number of accurate matches, since inaccurate features also tends to get higher correlation value at large scales. The nonlinear isotropic scale-space (scalar dependent diffusion), or the edge- preservation, approach is proven to be an ill fit method for fingerprint image enhancement. This is due to the fact that the analysis of edges may be unreliable, since edge structure is often distorted in fingerprints affected by the template ageing problem. The nonlinear anisotropic scale-space (tensor dependent diffusion), or coherence-enhancing, method does not give any overall improvements of the number of accurate matches. It is however shown that for a certain type of template ageing problem, where the deviating structure does not significantly affect the ridge orientation, the nonlinear anisotropic diffusion is able to accurately match correlation pairs that resulted in a false match before they were enhanced.

A numerical study of dilute suspensions based on a non-Newtonian matrix fluid and rigid spheroidal particles is performed. A Carreau fluid describes the non-Newtonian matrix. The special case of rigid spherical particles is considered. Here, a uniaxial elongational flow around a sphere is simulated and numerical homogenization is used to obtain the bulk viscosity of the dilute suspension for different applied rates of deformation and different thinning exponents. In the Newtonian regime the well-known Einstein result for the viscosity of a dilute suspension of rigid spherical particles is obtained. In the power-law regime it is found that the intrinsic viscosity depends only on the thinning exponent. Utilizing the simulation results a modification of the Carreau model for dilute suspensions with a non-Newtonian matrix fluid is proposed. To investigate the influence of the particle shape another numerical study is performed. In particular, different flows around spheroidal particles with different orientations are simulated and numerical homogenization is used to obtain the intrinsic viscosity of the suspension as function of applied rate of deformation, thinning exponent and aspect ratio. From the results it is possible to extract the rheological coefficients of the Lipscomb model. In the Newtonian regime the simulation results coincide with Lipscomb’s predictions. In the power-law regime the rheological coefficients depend strongly on the thinning exponent. Furthermore, simulation results indicate that the rheological coefficients additionally depend on the particle orientation in the non-linear regime. / Une étude numérique sur des suspensions diluées à base d’un fluide non newtonien et de particules sphéroïdales rigides est réalisée. Le comportement de la matrice est décrit par un fluide de type Carreau. De particules sphériques et rigides est considéré en premier. Un écoulement en élongation uniaxiale autour d’une sphère est simulée. Ensuite, l’homogénéisation numérique est utilisée pour déterminer la viscosité apparente de la suspension pour différents taux de déformation et d’indices pseudoplastiques. Dans le domaine newtonien, le résultat d’Einstein donnant la viscosité d’une suspension diluée de particules sphériques et rigides est obtenu. Dans le régime en loi de puissance on constate que la viscosité intrinsèque dépend uniquement de l’indice pseudoplastique. Une autre étude numérique est effectuée pour investiguer l’influence de la forme des particules. Plusieurs écoulements autour d’une particule sphéroïdale sont simulés pour différentes orientations. Une homogénéisation numérique est ensuite utilisée pour obtenir la viscosité intrinsèque de la suspension en fonction du taux de déformation appliqué, de l’indice d’écoulement et du rapport de forme de la particule. A partir de ces résultats, il est possible d’exprimer les coefficients rhéologiques du modèle de Lipscomb. Dans le régime newtonien, les résultats coïncident avec les prédictions de Lipscomb. Dans le domaine en loi de puissance, les coefficients rhéologiques deviennent fortement dépendent de l’indice pseudoplastique. En outre, les résultats des simulations montrent que ces coefficients rhéologiques dépendent également de l’orientation des particules dans le régime non linéaire. / Numerische Untersuchung zu verdünnten Suspensionen basierend auf einer nicht Newtonschen Matrixflüssigkeit und harten spheroidalen Partikeln wurde durchgeführt. Ein Carreau Fluid beschreibt die nicht Newtonsche Matrix. Zuerst wird der Spezialfall harter Kugeln betrachtet. Hierzu wird eine uniaxiale Dehnströmung um eine Kugel simuliert und numerische Homogenisierung wird verwendet um die effektive Viskosität der Suspension für verschieden aufgebrachte Deformationsgeschwindigkeiten und Verdünnungsexponenten zu bestimmen. Im Newtonschen Bereich wird die bekannte Lösung Einsteins für die Viskosität einer verdünnten Suspension harter Kugeln erhalten. Im power-law Bereich ist die intrinsische Viskosität einzig eine Funktion des Verdünnungsexponenten. Unter Nutzung der Simulationsergebnisse wird eine Modifikation des Carreau Modells vorgeschlagen. Um den Einfluss der Partikelform auf die nichtlinearen Eigenschaften zu untersuchen wird eine weitere numerische Simulationen durchgeführt. Dabei werden verschiedene Strömungen um spheroidale Partikel mit unterschiedlicher Orientierung simuliert und numerische Homogenisierung wird verwendet um die intrinsische Viskosität als Funktion der aufgebrachten Deformationsgeschwindigkeit, des Verdünnungsexponenten und des Partikelaspektverhältnisses zu bestimmen. Es ist möglich die rheologischen Parameter des Lipscomb Modells aus den Simulationsergebnissen zu bestimmen. Im Newtonschen Bereich stimmen die numerisch bestimmten Werte mit der Vorhersage Lipscomb‘s überein. Im power-law Bereich hängen die rheologischen Parameter stark vom Verdünnungsexponenten ab. Weiter kann man aus den Ergebnissen auf eine zusätzliche Abhängigkeit der rheologischen Parameter von der Partikelorientierung schließen.