This PhD thesis deals with several problems relative to the dynamo instability in liquid metals turbulent flows. This instability converts kinetic energy into magnetic one in electrically conductive flows. It is the root of the magnetic field of the Earth and the Sun.We address the estimation of threshold of the instability, the influence of the flow configuration and of the electromagnetic boundary conditions as well as the saturation mechanism of the magnetic field. This experimental work rely on two turbulent flows of von Kármán type: in liquid sodium located in Cadarache (VKS collaboration) and in liquid gallium in ENS de Lyon.First we analyze several criteria about the estimation of the distance to threshold of the dynamo instability with the magnetic response of the system to a magnetic excitation for the self sustained dynamo in the VKS experiment. These method have been checked for dynamo configurations and then applied for non-dynamo configurations. Then, we study the influence of the flow on the dynamo field under the action of global hydrodynamic bifurcations. We describe a bistability of the flow which triggers two dynamo branches of different amplitude and the dynamics of the transitions between both hydrodynamic and magnetic states.We then focus on the saturation mechanism with the semi-synthetic Bullard-von Karman dynamo, involving a turbulent induction mechanism and an artificial electronic feedback. This setup allows to observe dynamo action for very low magnetic Reynolds number, far below the natural threshold of the instability.We observe an intermittent regime close to threshold and a fluid saturation by Lorentz force feedback on the flow. We specify the scaling laws and a power budget estimation of this regime. A sub-critical regime is also introduced and characterized.In the last section we detailed several measurement techniques in liquid metals developed and used during the PhD.
