In this work, we study hyperbolic systems of balance laws. The first part is devoted to compressible fluid dynamics, and particularly to the lifespan of smooth or piecewise smooth solutions. After presenting the state of art, we show an extension to more general gases of a theorem by Grassin.We also study shock waves solutions: first, we extend T. T. Li's approach to estimate the time of existence in the isentropic spherical case; second, we develop Whitham's ideas to obtain an approximated equation satisfied by the discontinuity surface. In the second part, we set up a new model for a roundabout. This leads us to study a multi-class extension of the macroscopic Lighthill-Whitham-Richards' model. We study the traffic on an infinite road, with some points of junction. We distinguish vehicles according to their origin and destination and add some boundary conditions at the junctions. We obtain existence and uniqueness of a weak entropy solution for the Riemann problem. As a complement, we provide numerical simulations that exhibit solutions with a long time of existence. Finally, the Cauchy problem is tackled by the front tracking method. In the last part, we are interested in scalar hyperbolic balance laws. The first question addressed is the control of the total variation and the stability of entropy solutions with respect to flow and source. With this result, we can study equations with non-local flow, which do not fit into the framework of classical theorems. We show here that these kinds of equations are well posed and we show the Gâteaux-differentiability with respect to initial conditions, which is important to characterize maxima or minima of a given cost functional.
