Eurocodes

The eurocodes are the ten European standards (EN; harmonised technical rules) specifying how structural design should be conducted within the European Union (EU). These were developed by the European Committee for Standardisation upon the request of the the European Commission.

The purposes of the eurocodes are:

By March 2010 the Eurocodes are mandatory for the specification of European public works and are intended to become the de facto standard for the private sector. The Eurocodes therefore replace the existing national building codes published by national standard bodies (e.g. BS 5950), although many countries had a period of co-existence. Additionally, each country is expected to issue a National Annex to the Eurocodes which will need referencing for a particular country (e.g. The UK National Annex). At present take up of Eurocodes is slow on private sector projects and existing national codes are still widely used by engineers.

Eurocode 1: Actions on structures

In the eurocode series of European standards (EN) related to construction, Eurocode 1: Actions on structures (abbreviated EN 1991 or, informally, EC 1) describes how to design load-bearing structures. It includes characteristic values for various types of loads and densities for all materials which are likely to be used in construction.

Eurocode 0 is divided into a number of parts.

Part 1-1: Densities, self-weight, imposed loads for buildings

EN 1991-1-1 gives design guidance and actions for the structural design of buildings and civil engineering works including some geotechnical aspects for the following subjects:

Part 1-2: Actions on structures exposed to fire

Part 1-2 of EN 1991 deals with thermal and mechanical actions on structures exposed to fire. It is intended to be used in conjunction with the fire design Parts of EN 1992 to EN 1996 and EN 1999 which give rules for designing structures for fire resistance.

Eurocode 3: Design of steel structures

In the eurocode series of European standards (EN) related to construction, Eurocode 3: Design of steel structures (abbreviated EN 1993 or, informally, EC 3) describes how to design of steel structures, using the limit state design philosophy.

It was approved by the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) on 16 April 2004. Eurocode 3 comprises 20 documents dealing with the different aspects of steel structure design: