Dr Alexander Shaw

Dr Alexander Shaw

Senior Lecturer, Aerospace Engineering

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Office - 328
Third Floor
Engineering North
Bay Campus
Available For Postgraduate Supervision

About

Dr Shaw is a senior lecturer in the Aerospace portfolio at Swansea University, and part of the Aerospace Engineering and Structures group within the Zienkiewicz Centre for Computational Engineering (ZCCE). He teaches courses in structural analysis and aircraft design.

Dr Shaw’s research interests include structural vibration and morphing structures. Within structural vibration, his research is primarily concerned with nonlinearity, which induces some fascinating and elegant phenomena including chaotic and quasiperiodic responses. Industrial approaches to vibration are predominately linear, and therefore miss vital physics and can give poor predictions. Through both experimental and analytical approaches, the goal is to achieve tools that allow nonlinearity to be modelled efficiently and exploited in both static structures and rotating machinery.

Morphing aircraft are able to adapt their outer shape in response to changing flight requirements and therefore give improvements to overall mission efficiency. However they pose substantial challenges to aircraft structures. Dr Shaw is currently an investigator on the H2020 programme grant Shape Adaptive Blades for Rotorcraft Efficiency (SABRE) which is applying morphing concepts to helicopter rotor blades.

Areas Of Expertise

  • Structural dynamics
  • Nonlinear vibration
  • Morphing aircraft
  • Composite structures
  • Rotordynamics