Contributions méthodologiques à l'éco-conception des convertisseurs électromagnétiques d'énergie

Minimizing environmental impacts of human activity represent a major objective of sustainable development considering resources depletion and the limited capabilities of the environment to adapt. Devices with better environmental performance require a specific design approach integrating credible environmental criteria. It is indeed by acting at the early phase of design that it is likely to provide the maximum flexibility to minimize environmental impacts of a product (or service). This method is called eco-design. In the field of eco-design, these works are conduct on applications of electrical engineering and more specifically of electromagnetic energy converters. These components have the distinction of consuming energy during use. This particularity implies a strong connection between the operating mode of the device and its life cycle design. This thesis propose in a first part an introduction to life cycle assessment and to the basic principles of eco-design. The methodological perspectives that these considerations open in the specific field of Electrical Engineering are then described. In a second part, three Electrical Engineering cases of increasing complexity are studied : a simplified single-phase transformer, a permanent capacitor single-phase induction machine with very short operating times (real commercial product) and finally a three-phase induction machine with optimized power supply. These applications are used to emphasize the principles of eco-design and are optimized regarding three environmental criteria : the gross energy requirement, the resources depletion and the global warming potential. In fact, taking into account other environmental impacts is identical in terms of methodology. In these studies, we show that it is interesting to optimize the design of these electromagnetic converters on life cycle, when their cumulative operating time is small compared to the total time of use. The amount of operating losses is also a parameter having a significant action on the results of eco-design. The setting of these applications is also subject to various sensitivity studies in order to determine more precisely the influence of the elementary energy costs, the choice of raw materials, etc.. Finally, we introduce the definition of an energy efficiency on life cycle more appropriate to an eco-design methodology.