Professor Alex Pavic

Updated: 2 October 2019

PA: Katy Manning

Professor Aleksandar Pavic holds the Chair in Vibration Engineering since 2004 and leads the Vibration Engineering Section in the Engineering discipline. The research group transferred to Exeter in May 2013, after 20 years at the University of Sheffield. His particular 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 believes that the best laboratory is full-scale, real world with plenty of unique prototypes of large civil engineering structures. 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. He is a trained bridge engineer and 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.

In 2013, 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. Currently he is a key co-investigator on major multi-£m grants investigating human perception of vibration using worldwide unique virtual simulation facility at the University of Exeter (VSimulators from 2017) and dynamic sway of tall timber buildings under service wind loading (DynaTTB from 2018).

Professor Pavic has edited special issues of international journals devoted to vibration performance of civil engineering structures. Also, 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:

• The Concrete Society (Technical Report 43, Appendix G: Vibration Serviceability of Post-Tensioned Concrete Floors) in 2005,
• The Concrete Centre (A Design Guide for Footfall Induced Vibration of Structures) in 2007, and
• The Steel Construction Institute (Design of Floors for Vibration: A New Approach) in 2007

He also 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 is a founding Editor-in-Chief of Vibration, an open access on-line journal published by MDPI from Switzerland, arguably the largest publisher of on-line journals in the world.

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.

Between January 2014 and July 2019 Professor Pavic was Associate Dean for Research and Knowledge Transfer (ADRKT) at the College of Engineering, Mathematics and Physical Sciences (EMPS). At the end of his second term in office, he was responsible for generating over £30m of new research awards and spending of over £25m of research income per year in the College, which is about a third of the overall university's research awards/inome per year. During his two terms of office he oversaw and managed rapid growth of research staff, research and knowledge transfer income and outputs in the College which resulted in doubling of the College's research income in less than 6 years.