Mesure et modélisation dynamique de la couche de gelée dans un réacteur métallurgique

Résumé : La mesure des profils transitoires et de la vitesse de solidification sont deux données importantes pour le contrôle de procédés industriels impliquant un changement de phase. Dans le cas de l’électrolyse de l’aluminium, ce processus de solidification assure la protection du système et influe sur la performance énergétique du procédé de fabrication. Malheureusement, ces données se révèlent, dans la plupart des cas, difficilement accessibles. Ce travail de thèse porte sur le développement de nouveaux outils permettant l’étude et la caractérisation de la solidification de matériaux à changement de phase et à haute température. L’objectif est de développer un système de mesure du front de solidification de matériaux à changement de phase non destructif et ne perturbant pas le milieu de mesure, tout en assurant une précision et une réponse suffisamment rapide pour exploiter de nouvelles stratégies de contrôle dans les cuves d’électrolyse. Ce travail couple une étude expérimentale fondamentale de la solidification de la cryolithe avec une modélisation numérique de phénomène de changement de phase solide-liquide dans des conditions proches du fonctionnement de cuves d’électrolyse. // Abstract : Measurement of transient solidification fronts and of solidification rate are two important data for controlling industrial processes involving a solid-liquid phase change. In the case of aluminium electrolysis, this solidification process protects the system and affects the energy performance of the manufacturing process. Unfortunately, these data are not easy to obtain in most cases. This thesis focuses on the development of new tools for the study and on the solidification characterization of phase change materials at high temperature. The goal is to develop a nondestructive solidification front measurement system for phase change materials without disturbing the measurement medium, while ensuring accuracy and a fast enough response time to exploit new control strategies in electrolysis cells. This work couples a fundamental experimental study of the cryolite solidification with numerical modeling of solid-liquid phase change phenomenon under conditions close to those during normal operation of electrolytic cells

Debiasing the crowd: selectively exchanging social information improves collective decision making

Collective decision making is ubiquitous across biological systems. However, biases at the individual level can impair the quality of collective decisions. One prime bias is the human tendency to underestimate quantities. We performed estimation experiments in human groups, in which we re-wired the structure of information exchange, favouring the exchange of estimates closest to an overestimation of the median, expected to approximate the truth. We show that this re-wiring of social information exchange counteracts the underestimation bias and boosts collective decisions compared to random exchange. Underlying this result are a human tendency to herd, to trust large numbers more than small numbers, and to follow disparate social information less. We introduce a model that reproduces all the main empirical results, and predicts conditions for optimising collective decisions. Our results show that leveraging existing knowledge on biases can boost collective decision making, paving the way for combating other cognitive biases threatening collective systems

Complexity of Membership and Non-Emptiness Problems in Unbounded Memory Automata

We study the complexity relationship between three models of unbounded memory automata: nu-automata ($\nu$-A), Layered Memory Automata (LaMA)and History-Register Automata (HRA). These are all extensions of finite state automata with unbounded memory over infinite alphabets. We prove that the membership problem is NP-complete for all of them, while they fall into different classes for what concerns non-emptiness. The problem of non-emptiness is known to be Ackermann-complete for HRA, we prove that it is PSPACE-complete for $\nu$-A

"Thermal Spike" model applied to thin targets irradiated with swift heavy ion beams at few MeV/u

International audienceHigh electronic excitations in radiation of metallic targets with swift heavy ion beams at the coulomb barrier play a dominant role in the damaging processes of some metals. The inelastic thermal spike model was developed to describe tracks in materials and is applied in this paper to some systems beams/targets employed recently in some nuclear physics experiments. Taking into account the experimental conditions and the approved electron-phonon coupling factors, the results of the calculation enable to interpret the observation of the fast deformation of some targets