Poincaré, Einstein,et l’inertie de l’énergie

The mystery surrounding the discovery of the inertia of energy is solved by considering its connection with an older problem: the effect of uniform, global motion on the forces acting in an electric System. From Maxwell's and his disciples’ point of view this effect confirmed the existence of the ether. From Poincaré’ s point of view, it was paradoxical for it contradicted the relativity principle and went with a violation of the principle of reaction. The inertia of energy, as Einstein proposed it in 1905, answered these paradoxes in the framework of special relativity and in Poincaré’s style of reasoning.     

Sur le pouvoir thermoélectrique de l’alliage Cu3Au en fonction de l’ordre

The thermoelectric power of Cu₃Au alloy is calculated as a function of the order with the hypothesis of free electrons, assuming that the Brillouin zones do not change at the critical point. By assuming a square-well scattering potential it is found that the thermoelectric power decreases with increasing temperature and exhibits a discontinuity at the critical point.     

Confinement des radioéléments de haute activité et des combustibles nucléaires usés

This article gives a compilation of quantified data on high activity radiological products generated in Nuclear Power Plants since their beginning, comparing them to the capabilities of the main types of spent fuel storage, which are under development: i.e., glass canisters of fission products, after reprocessing, and Fuel assemblies themselves, for storage in ponds, and, more recently, for smaller quantities, under dry atmospheric conditions.The main conclusion underlines that today, quantities are large and increasing, and that industrial solutions other than ponds, do not exist at present and will not be implemented in the next twenty years, with the exception of dry centralized storage, based on the feed back experience which is now thirty years late compared to pond storage.Technical conclusions are, finally, drawn on the feedback knowledge and the continuous improvements implemented in the wet type of confinement system. To cite this article: J.P. Martin, W.J. Fournier, C. R. Physique 3 (2002) 867–877.     

Procédure rapide de choix de réseaux d'échangeurs de chaleur

A fast calculation of a reasonable solution for the choice of a heat exchanger network able to make some imposed cooling and warming up tasks, with the use of auxiliary utilities, is developed in this article.This problem boils down to the internal heat exchanger network choice with respect to a constraint limiting the exchange area, maximizing the heat recovery and minimizing the number of stream matching.These internal matches are made one by one with respect to the tasks to be effected at each step. Amongst the possible matches, we have retained the privilegied ones, ie matches saturating a maximum number of constraints. Some procedures are implemented so as to choose among this set of privilegied matches.The illustration with some literature problems shows that an algorithm made up with these procedures carries out a good compromise between the quality of the obtained solution and the computer time.     

Quelques nouvelles propriétés de régularité de l'opérateur de Gribov

In this work, we establish new regularity properties for Gribov's operator:H=A ^* A ₊ iA ^*(A+A ^*)A;(,)², whereA ^* andA are the creation and annihilation operators. Particularly, we prove that for all >0,H ^–1 is in the class of Carleman's operatorl ₁₊.     

Instabilités de calibration de phase

In very long baseline interferometry, the image reconstruction procedures are very sensitive to the potential instabilities of the phase calibration operation. The analysis presented in this Note reveals that these instabilities are due to the existence of secondary minima (more or less critical) of the phase calibration objective functional. By resolving the corresponding integer ambiguity problems in an appropriate manner, these minima can be explicitly identified and compared. The stability of the self-calibration procedures can thus be easily controlled. To cite this article: A. Lannes, C. R. Physique 4 (2003).     

Etude expérimentale de la dévolatilisation rapide de charbons pulvérisés

Experimental study of the rapid devolatilization of pulverized coals. Rapid devolatilization of various pulverized coals have been studied in a laboratory bench constituted by a flat flame burner of propane which reproduces thermal conditions of an industrial flame. The particles, which undergo a heating rate of 6.10⁶ K⁻¹.s⁻¹ with a peak temperature of 1 100 °C, are completely devolatilized within 24 ms. Fifteen coals, included in a wide range (anthracite to subbituminous coal) have been tested. The coal weight loss is globally proportional to the normalized volatile matter content with some exceptions which confirm the advantage of this laboratory bench. The formation of tars or hydrocarbons has been related to the coal weight loss. Carbon, hydrogen and nitrogen devolatilized fraction have been followed with total mass weight loss. In spite of the fact that hydrogen and carbon devolatilized fractions present a good correlation with the total mass weight loss, the nitrogen devolatilized fraction have an anarchic evolution. For high heating rates, the devolatilization of tars observed for the bituminous coals seems to explain this unpredictable phenomenon. These results will be valorized in comparison with those obtained in industrial flame conditions.     

Etude théorique de la durée de vie radiative du triplet métastable de quelques composés carbonylés

Les paramètres de phosphorescence (force d'oscillateur et durée de vie), sont déterminés théoriquement pour quelques composés carbonylés (formaldéhyde, benzaldéhyde, acétophénone, propiophénone, 2,4,5-triméthylbenzaldéhyde, et 3,4-diméthylacétophénone). La fonction d'onde de l'état singulet fondamental est obtenue à l'aide d'un calcul SCF utilisant la méthode CNDO/S de Del Bene et Jaffé. Les fonctions d'onde, les énergies et les moments de transition dipolaire électrique S_I ←S ₀ et T_J ←T ₁ sont déterminés à l'aide d'une interaction portant sur des configurations mono et diexcitées par rapport à l'état singulet fondamental.

Les paramètres de phosphorescence sont calculés en utilisant une approximation monocentrique et monoélectronique de l'opérateur hamiltonien de couplage spin-orbite. Cette approximation est justifiée par la comparaison des résultats obtenus avec les valeurs expérimentales, compte tenu de la concordance entre les conditions d'expérience et les hypothèses de calcul.     

Etude de l'énergie de désorption des substances polaires

Polar substance energy desorption study. This study suggests an extension of the Dubinin-Radushkevich and Gibbs-Helmholtz equations, by using adsorption forces in microporous composites. These forces, mainly those of Van der Waals, have been set up in three groups of components according to their effects :

• •unspecified forces,
• •dispersion-perturbation forces,
• •quadrupole and dipole interaction forces.

The suggested models take into account the different forces and present a good coherence with the experiment.     

Evolution avec la température de la réflectivité, de l'indice complexe et de la sélectivité spectrale du nitrure de zirconium

The reflectance of zirconium nitride has been measured at 20, 500 and 700°C, within the range 0.22 to 5.50 μ m. The optical constants have been determined using Kramers-Kronig analysis. The spectral selectivity of this compound noticeably depends on temperature; the absorptance increases from 0.28 at 20°C to 0.36 at 700°C while the emittance increases from 0.06 to 0.14.     

Développement de lasers visibles pompés par diode à base de cristaux de Nd:GdCOB autodoubleurs de fréquence

We present the performances of a diode-pumped solid-state laser operating in the visible by self-frequency-doubling. A cw output power of 115 mW at 545 nm has been obtained in a stable concave–concave cavity by using a crystal of Nd:GdCa₄O(BO₃)₃ pumped by a 2 W high-brightness laser diode. In a plano–plano cavity, similar to a microchip laser, we have obtained, for the first time to our knowledge, an output power of 22 mW in the green.     

Modélisation de séchoirs à tapis. Utilisation des réseaux de neurones

Modelling of convective layer dryers. Using neural networks. Dryer modelling is considered in this paper. A dryer scale approach is implemented in order to write the classical differential equations through parameters such as the heat transfer coefficient or drying kinetics. The behaviour of the dryers is described by a non-linear system which integrates these equations in a transfer network using the finite difference method. The finite difference method is easy to implement, but appears to be too slow for dryer designing. So, in the second part of the study, neural networks are used to model drying process in steady state. When applying neural networks method to the design of dryers, one of the main problems is to find necessary and sufficient inputs so that the neural networks can learn transfers laws. To reduce the problem, each output is defined by a single neural network and non-dimensional numbers are used. The following step deals with the determination of the number of neurones and the minimization of output error for each efficiency (change of training points). Then, neural networks are used to simulate different configurations of dryers. Results are compared with the finite difference method and an industrial application is studied in the last chapter.