Abstract
The work carried out in this thesis explores the behavioral responses of a granular material placed in a cell and subjected to the mechanical disturbance of an intruder. It is divided in two main parts where the experimental and numerical approaches developed are declined: (i) description of the implementation status of a powdery granular medium (grain pouring and static state of the granular column) and ( ii) quantification of a granular bed disturbances by the ascent of an intruder initially placed at the bottom of the cell. This specific configuration constitutes a 2D simplification of real, more complex mechanical stresses that appear in unit operations of mixing or kneading granular materials, such as those used in the industrial sectors of the food industry, agricultural supplies, civil engineering or pharmaceutical. These technological operations, with energy efficiency generally studied empirically according to experimental designs, underlie scientific questions which add a cognitive dimension to the already significant interest represented by their optimization challenges.To answer these questions, two complementary multi-scale approaches are carried out. The first, experimental, is based on a pilot specially developed in this thesis. The second consists in perform numerical simulations by the Discrete Element Method (DEM) coupled with a procedure named coarse-graining.