Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

International Initiatives

ANR MICROWAVE

Participants : Christophe Besse, Ingrid Lacroix-Violet.

Ch. Besse and I. Lacroix-Violet are members of the new 4-years ANR "blanche" project MICROWAVE. Ch. Besse is the North node coordinator. The scientific subjects deal with artificial boundary conditions for dispersive equations, electromagnetism and high frequency regimes in acoustic simulations. This ANR project concerns the development of new numerical methods for wave propagation problems using tools from microlocal analysis. It focuses on microlocal analysis and numerical methods for acoustic and electromagnetic wave scattering and microlocal analysis and numerical methods for Schrödinger-type equations.

ANR IODISSEE

Participants : Christophe Besse, Pauline Lafitte, Chang Yang.

Ch. Besse has obtained a 4-years ANR grant, from the Cosinus proposal, for the project IODISSEE. P. Lafitte and C. Yang, also members of the EPI Simpaf, are involved in this project. The project IODISSEE also involves a team of mathematicians from Toulouse, a physicist team from Versailles and the Thales group. It deals with the elaboration of a physical model for helping the industrial partner for the new generation of Galileo satellites. For the last decade, satellite positioning devices became one of the most interesting means of navigation for the displacement of the goods and the people. The only current solution is based on the constellation of satellites Navstar GPS American system. Originally developed for military applications, its use was released under the Clinton administration. However, in order to guarantee its autonomy, Europe decided to launch a competitor program known as Galileo. Galileo system differs from the GPS thanks to its capability to provide real time integrity information to the user. In order to guarantee the stability of this system, it is fundamental to take into account the various problems which can affect the mission and to identify all the potential sources of system unavailability. One of the main source of data unavailability that has been identified is the phenomena of ionospheric scintillations. Indeed scintillation causes radio frequency signal amplitude fades and phase variations as satellite signals pass through the ionosphere. Such effects may induce loss of lock or cycle slips on ranging signals broadcast by Galileo satellites making them totally useless for accurate integrity information determination. Scintillations are clearly identified like a source of disturbances. They appear as the turbulent aspect of a larger disturbance of the ionospheric plasma density which have the shape of a plasma bubble. The difficulty of their modeling is due to the lacks of in situ measurements with regard to them. However, some measurements recently acquired during the mission of satellite DEMETER make possible on the one hand the validation of the models existing but also, using techniques of data-models coupling, to reinforce them. The object of this proposal is therefore to provide a physical model making it possible to anticipate the attenuation of the signals during their propagation within the disturbed Earth ionosphere.

ANR MEGAS

Participant : Mathias Rousset.

M. Rousset is involved in the ANR MEGAS. The main scientific subject is numerical methods in Molecular Dynamics simulation.

ANR INTOCS

Participants : Pauline Lafitte, Jean-François Coulombel, Frédéric Lagoutière.

J.-F. Coulombel has obtained a 4-years ANR grant "young researcher", for the project INTOCS. In addition to the coordinator, two other members of the EPI SIMPAF are involved in this project: P. Lafitte et F. Lagoutière. The main scientific subject of the project is the interaction of compressible waves, and more precisely the propagation of high frequency oscillations in hyperbolic boundary value problems. One of the physical motivations is the "Mach stems" formation in reacting gas flows.

AEN Fusion

Participants : Christophe Besse, Thierry Goudon.

SIMPAF is involved in the project led by E. Sonnendrucker from EPI Calvi, which aims at fostering the national research effort in mathematics and computer science towards the simulation of large magnetic confinement devices, like ITER. The project Fusion is currently under evaluation.

COADVISE European Project PEOPLE/IRSES

Participants : Christophe Besse, Caterina Calgaro, Olivier Goubet, Thierry Goudon, Jean-Paul Chehab.

In 2006, under an initiative of J.-P. Chehab, the SIMPAF team has initiated a collaborating program “3+3 Méditerranée” funded by INRIA. This program, devoted to Modelling, Analysis and Simulation of Hydrodynamic Waves, is the continuation of the MASOH project. To be more specific, the project focuses on water waves modelled by dispersive PDEs (Korteweg-De Vries, Benjamin-Ono, KP and Nonlinear Schrödinger equations). The goal is to elaborate efficient multilevel numerical schemes that will be able to help in the understanding of finite time blow up or the asymptotic smoothing effects due to damping.

As a consequence, four PhD theses were started co-advised by SIMPAF's members.

Emna Ezzoug, from Monastir, advised by E. Zahrouni, J. Laminie and O. Goubet, started in July 2006;

Ibtissem Damergi, from Monastir, by advised E. Zahrouni, Ch. Besse and O. Goubet, started in July 2006;

Salim Amr Salim Djabir, from Marrakesh, advised by M. Abounouh and J.-P. Chehab, started in January 2007;

Maithem Trabelsi, from Tunis advised by E. E. Zahrouni and J.-P. Chehab, started in September 2007.

ARC DISCO

Participant : Antoine Gloria.

A. Gloria is the leader of the ARC project DISCO. The main objective is the design, mathematical analysis, numerical analysis, and numerical simulation of discrete models for rubber. The participants are F. Lequeux (polymer physics, ESPCI), P. Le Tallec (mechanics, Ecole polytechnique), F. Otto (mathematics, MPI Leipzig), M. Vidrascu (scientific computing, INRIA Paris-Rocquencourt), and M. de Buhan (postdoc until September 2011). A workshop was organized in January 2011.

ANR AMAM

Participant : Antoine Gloria.

A. Gloria is involved in the 4-year ANR project “young researcher” AMAM, led by V. Millot (Paris 7). The aim of the project is to develop mathematical tools for the analysis of multiscale problems in material sciences (PDEs and variational methods). The fields of interest are primarily micromagnetics, dislocations, fatigue in nonlinear elasticity, and homogenization.

Project CNRS-DGRSRT N° 22640

Participant : Caterina Calgaro.

The main goal of the project is the mathematical analysis and the simulation of miscible or immiscible fluids. In this context, C. Calgaro visited the University of Monastir (Tunisia). As a consequence, one PhD thesis started in october 2010 : Meriem Ezzoug, from Tunis, advised by E. Zahrouni and C. Calgaro.