Two-stroke poppet-valved engines may combine the high power density of two - stroke engines and the low emissions of poppet-valved engines. A two-stroke diesel engine can generate the same power as a four-stroke engine of the same size, but at higher (leaner) air/fuel ratios. Diesel combustion at high air/fuel ratios generally means hydrocarbons, soot and carbon monoxide are oxidised more completely to water and carbon dioxide in the cylinder, and the opportunity to increase the rate of exhaust gas recirculation should reduce the formation of nitrogen oxides (NOx). The concept is being explored as a means of economically modifying diesel engines to make them cleaner and/or more powerful. This study details the application of two computational models to this problem. The first model is a relatively simple thermodynamic model created by the author capable of rapidly estimating the behaviour of entire engine systems. It was used to estimate near-optimum engine system parameters at single engine operating points and over a six-mode engine cycle. The second model is a detailed CFD model called KIVA-ERC. It is a hybrid of the KIVA engine modelling package developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and combustion and emissions subroutines developed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Engine Research Center. It was used for detailed scavenging and combustion simulations and to provide estimates of emissions levels. Both models were calibrated and validated for four-stroke cycle operation using experimental data. The thermodynamic model was used to provide initial and boundary conditions to the KIVA-ERC model. Conversely, the combustion simulations were used to adjust zero-dimensional combustion correlations when experimental data was not available. Scavenging simulations were performed with shrouded and unshrouded intake valves. A new two-zone scavenging model was proposed and validated using multidimensional scavenging simulations. A method for predicting the behaviour of the two-stroke engine system based on four-stroke data has been proposed. The results using this method indicate that a four-stroke diesel engine with minor modifications can be converted to a two-stroke cycle and achieve substantially the same fuel efficiency as the original engine. However, emissions levels can not be predicted accurately without experimental data from a physical prototype. It is therefore recommended that such a prototype be constructed, based on design parameters obtained from the numerical models used in this study.

Les systèmes d'Entrepôts de Données et OLAP spatiaux (EDS et SOLAP) sont des technologies d'aide à la décision permettant l'analyse multidimensionnelle de gros volumes de données spatiales. Dans ces systèmes, la qualité de l'analyse dépend de trois facteurs : la qualité des données entreposées, la qualité des agrégations et la qualité de l’exploration des données. La qualité des données entreposées dépend de critères comme la précision, l'exhaustivité et la cohérence logique. La qualité d'agrégation dépend de problèmes structurels (e.g. les hiérarchies non strictes qui peuvent engendrer le comptage en double des mesures) et de problèmes sémantiques (e.g. agréger les valeurs de température par la fonction Sum peut ne pas avoir de sens considérant une application donnée). La qualité d'exploration est essentiellement affectée par des requêtes utilisateur inconsistantes (e.g. quelles ont été les valeurs de température en URSS en 2010 ?). Ces requêtes peuvent engendrer des interprétations erronées des résultats. Cette thèse s'attaque aux problèmes d'incohérence logique qui peuvent affecter les qualités de données, d'agrégation et d'exploration. L'incohérence logique est définie habituellement comme la présence de contradictions dans les données. Elle est typiquement contrôlée au moyen de Contraintes d'Intégrité (CI). Dans cette thèse nous étendons d'abord la notion de CI (dans le contexte des systèmes SOLAP) afin de prendre en compte les incohérences relatives aux agrégations et requêtes utilisateur. Pour pallier les limitations des approches existantes concernant la définition des CI SOLAP, nous proposons un Framework basé sur les langages standards UML et OCL. Ce Framework permet la spécification conceptuelle et indépendante des plates-formes des CI SOLAP et leur implémentation automatisée. Il comporte trois parties : (1) Une classification des CI SOLAP. (2) Un profil UML implémenté dans l'AGL MagicDraw, permettant la représentation conceptuelle des modèles des systèmes SOLAP et de leurs CI. (3) Une implémentation automatique qui est basée sur les générateurs de code Spatial OCL2SQL et UML2MDX qui permet de traduire les spécifications conceptuelles en code au niveau des couches EDS et serveur SOLAP. Enfin, les contributions de cette thèse ont été appliquées dans le cadre de projets nationaux de développement d'applications (S)OLAP pour l'agriculture et l'environnement. / Spatial Data Warehouse (SDW) and Spatial OLAP (SOLAP) systems are Business Intelligence (BI) allowing for interactive multidimensional analysis of huge volumes of spatial data. In such systems the quality ofanalysis mainly depends on three components : the quality of warehoused data, the quality of data aggregation, and the quality of data exploration. The warehoused data quality depends on elements such accuracy, comleteness and logical consistency. The data aggregation quality is affected by structural problems (e.g., non-strict dimension hierarchies that may cause double-counting of measure values) and semantic problems (e.g., summing temperature values does not make sens in many applications). The data exploration quality is mainly affected by inconsistent user queries (e.g., what are temperature values in USSR in 2010?) leading to possibly meaningless interpretations of query results. This thesis address the problems of logical inconsistency that may affect the data, aggregation and exploration qualities in SOLAP. The logical inconsistency is usually defined as the presence of incoherencies (contradictions) in data ; It is typically controlled by means of Integrity Constraints (IC). In this thesis, we extends the notion of IC (in the SOLAP domain) in order to take into account aggregation and query incoherencies. To overcome the limitations of existing approaches concerning the definition of SOLAP IC, we propose a framework that is based on the standard languages UML and OCL. Our framework permits a plateforme-independent conceptual design and an automatic implementation of SOLAP IC ; It consists of three parts : (1) A SOLAP IC classification, (2) A UML profile implemented in the CASE tool MagicDraw, allowing for a conceptual design of SOLAP models and their IC, (3) An automatic implementation based on the code generators Spatial OCLSQL and UML2MDX, which allows transforming the conceptual specifications into code. Finally, the contributions of this thesis have been experimented and validated in the context of French national projetcts aimming at developping (S)OLAP applications for agriculture and environment.