La Réfrigération Magnétique : Conceptualisation, Caractérisation et Simulation

Magnetic refrigeration is a relevant alternative in consideration of environmental restrictions of refrigerants gases. These restrictions require to improve the current technology or to pave the way for a new one, hence the opportunity for magnetic refrigeration to demonstrate its potential. Indeed, it could be energetically efficient and with higher power densities. This work aims to estimate the potential of magnetic refrigeration. Magnetism and thermodynamic, essential tools for our study, are developed in a case of magnetocaloric effect. With some care, we show that material characterizations are able to give consistence and relevant model. Magnetocaloric effect suffers of small temperature variations; therefore structures that increase the temperature span and give competitive system are studied. Finally numerical models are developed to optimize active magnetic regenerators, which are currently the most used. These models are used to calculate and design systems close to their optimum.