Prof. Aleksandar Pavic, Professor of Vibration Engineering at the University of Exeter, holds the Chair in Vibration Engineering and leads the Vibration Engineering Section in the Engineering discipline.
Professor Pavic’s expertise is in vibration serviceability of slender civil engineering structures, such as long-span floors, footbridges and grandstands, which are occupied and dynamically excited by humans. He made his academic career by modelling, testing and monitoring full-scale (foot)bridges, floors, grandstands, staircases, long and tall structures, and learning how these structures behave in the real world. A trained bridge engineer, he has keen interests in bridge monitoring and ‘Big Data’ approaches to their management.
This research portfolio is underpinned by advanced research tools such as vibration testing and system identification of as-built large civil engineering structures using full-scale modal testing and finite element model correlation and updating technology based on experimental measurements.
Recently, he extended his interests in human-induced dynamic forces on structures to the same forces but applied on human musculo-skeletal systems and is a co-investigator on a major EPSRC Frontier Engineering grant dealing with this problem.
Professor Pavic is Editor in Chief of Vibration journal and has edited special issues of international journals devoted to vibration performance of civil engineering structures. In addition, his co-authorship or contribution has been recognised in state-of-the-art design guidelines. These are currently used in the UK and internationally for checking vibration serviceability of floors and footbridges
Furthermore, he co-authored and helped experimental verification of worldwide most advanced design guidelines on crowd dynamic loading of grandstands published by the UK Institution of Structural Engineers in 2008. He sat on British Standards Institution (BS6472) and International standardisation Organisation (ISO10137) committees developing standards pertinent to vibration serviceability.
Professor Pavic’s expertise is sought after by industry and he is a Managing Director of Full Scale Dynamics Ltd, a university spin-off company specialised in commercial testing, monitoring and performance assessment of full-scale civil engineering structures.
Professor Pavic is Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer at the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences and member of the College Executive Group and University's Senior Management Group.
