Résumé : This thesis presents the construction, the analysis and the verication of compact residual discretizations for the solution of conservation laws on unstructured meshes.

The schemes considered belong to the class of residual distribution (RD) or fluctuation splitting (FS) schemes.

The methodology presented relies on three main elements: design of compact linear first-order stable schemes for linear hyperbolic PDEs, a positivity preserving procedure mapping stable first-order linear schemes onto nonlinear second-order schemes with non-oscillatory shock capturing capabilities, and a conservative formulation enabling to extend the schemes to nonlinear CLs. These three design steps, and the underlying theoretical tools, are discussed in depth. The nonlinear RD schemes resulting from this construction are tested on a large set of problems involving the solution of scalar models, and systems of CLs. This extensive verification fills the gaps left open, where no theoretical analysis is possible.

Numerical results are presented on the Euler equations of a perfect gas, on a two-phase flow model with highly nonlinear thermodynamics, and on the shallow-water equations.

On irregular grids, the schemes proposed yield quite accurate and stable solutions even on very difficult computations. Direct comparisone show that these results are more accurate than the ones given by FV and WENO schemes. Moreover, our schemes have a compact nearest-neighbor stencil. This encourages to further develop our approach, toward the design of very high-order schemes, which would represent a very appealing alternative, both in terms of accuracy and efficiency, to now classical FV and ENO/WENO discretizations. These schemes might also be very competitive with respect to very high-order DG schemes.