Eurocode 7 and New Design Challenges

Workshop for young practitioners and researchers

Tuesday 19 March 2013 16:30

University College London

Eurocode 7 has been established as the current European standard for geotechnical engineering
design. The next generation of geotechnical engineers (current graduates and young researchers) will
use EC7 on a regular basis. This workshop aims to encourage young geotechnical engineers to
engage with the new European safety codes and design methodologies. Talks by international experts
involved in the development of EC7 will be followed by presentations from designers about their
experience with EC7 compliant design.

Speakers of the 1st session:

Brian Simpson is an Arup Fellow, a principal of Arup Geotechnics and an Honorary

Professor at the University of Nottingham, UK. He has worked on a wide range of
geotechnical and ground-structure interaction problems, maintaining particular interests in
numerical modelling, retaining structures and tunnels. He presented the BGA Rankine
Lecture in 1992 and a State-of-the-Art report on Geotechnical Analysis and Design at the
2009 international conference of ISSMGE. Since the early 1980s, he has been involved in
the development of Eurocode 7 (Geotechnical Design), having been a member of its
drafting panels and vice-chairman of the CEN (Comit Europen de Normalisation) committee on Eurocode
7 (SC7). He has authored two commentaries on Eurocode 7 and several papers on various related issues.
He is the current chair of ISSMGE Technical Committee TC205 on Safety and serviceability in geotechnical
engineering and of the BSI committee on geotechnical codes, B/526. He is often the UK delegate to SC7
and is a member of several of the EC7 Evolution Groups

Helmut F. Schweiger is Head of the Computational Geotechnics Group at the Institute

for Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering of the Graz University of Technology in
Austria and has over 20 years of experience in developing and applying numerical methods
in geomechanics. He obtained his Ph.D. form the University of Wales, Swansea, UK. He is a
member of the editorial board of several international journals and was chairman of 6th
European Conference on Numerical Methods in Engineering. His main research interests
are the development of multilaminate models for soils, application of Random Set Theory to finite element
analysis and the assessment of the influence of the constitutive model for solving practical problems, in
particular deep excavations, deep foundations and tunnels.

Giuseppe Scarpelli is Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the University of

Ancona, Italy and national representative at the European committee for Eurocode 7 on
geotechnical design. He is also convenor of the European working Group TC250/EC7
for Seismic Geotechnical Design according to EC7 and EC8 and convenor of the
Geotechnical committee for revision of the Italian Technical Code for Constructions. His
main research interests include constitutive behaviour of stiff overconsolidated clays, rupture propagation
in soils, slope deformation analysis, foundation engineering for historical buildings. Since 1994 he has been
involved as Geotechnical consultant in a number of projects including works for harbours, landslides and
tunnelling, foundation engineering and earth retaining structures in urban areas.

Christos Vrettos is Professor of Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering at the

Technical University of Kaiserslautern in Germany. His expertise covers soil dynamics,
numerical methods in geomechanics, deep foundations, unsaturated soils, earth dams,
deep excavations, and terramechanics. He spent several years in construction industry and
geotechnical consulting. He is convenor of the EC7 evolution group on calculation models,
and member of various DIN committees while he is author of numerous publications, and
editor-in-chief of geotechnik.
 Eurocode 7 and New Design Challenges
A View from Industry

Speakers of the 2nd session:

David Beadman has over thirty years experience of civil and geotechnical design,
specialising in developing economic, buildable solutions for deep basement
excavations, combining knowledge of retaining wall design, structural design and
construction. David is a Director of Byrne Looby Partners, Geotechnical Consultants
and is responsible for their London Area office. Prior to this he held senior positions
with Tony Gee and Partners, Arup and Bachy Soletanche. He has been responsible
for the design of many deep basements in the UK and overseas, including basements in London and
for stations on the Jubilee Line Extension and the Copenhagen Metro. He has provided one-day
courses for Thomas Telford on the subject of Eurocode 7.

Evan Passaris is a Technical Director in Atkins Ground Engineering Division. Evan

has more than 40 years of international and UK experience in engineering
consultancy in underground gas storage, rock mechanics and geotechnics in
general. For 16 years he was the Director of the Newcastle University Rock
Mechanics Laboratories. Between 1980 and 1996 he was I.C.I.s Senior Consultant
for their underground excavations in salt. Between 1998 and 2004 he contributed
in the geotechnical projects of the Athens Olympic Games. Since 2005 his work at
Atkins included projects concerning: Underground storage schemes, Advanced geotechnical numerical
modelling, Geotechnical design of tunnels, Expert witness services, Mining geomechanics, Retaining
structures and Ground subsidence. Since October 2008 he is a Visiting Professor at the University of
Leeds.

Stuart Pennington is an engineer with 13 years experience in geotechnical

consultancy which has been spread between roles in the UK, Middle East and
Australia. He currently works in Arups London geotechnical group. During his
experience Stuart has worked on projects ranging in scale from residential footings to
deep basements. His roles in these projects have ranged from borehole logging to
construction supervision to designer. He has recently co-authored the soon to be
published IStructE manual on Eurocode 7.

Dimitrios Selemetas obtained his MSc with Distinction from Glasgow University and
his PhD from Cambridge University. Following a brief spell as a geotechnical engineer
with Mott MacDonald and as an instrumentation specialist with CMCS at the Building
Research Establishment (BRE), he joined the piling and foundations division of
Skanska, Cementation Skanska in 2007. Dimitrios has a keen interest on the
applications of Eurocodes to pile design and has developed specialist software for the
design of piles to Eurocode 7 and Eurocode 2.

James Straw is a Chartered Civil Engineer from Mott MacDonald Ltd who works within
the Metros and Civil's department at the companies head office at Croydon. James
graduated with a 1st class Masters in Engineering from the University of Newcastle
Upon Tyne in 2006 immediately taking up a position within the Foundations and
Geotechnics team at Mott MacDonald. James has design experience in shallow and
deep foundations, slope stability, deep excavations, large diameter piles, embedded
retaining walls and ground anchors, and has worked on major infrastructure projects in
the Middle East and the UK.
Timetable

1st session 16:30-18:30 chaired by Dr Andrew Bond, Director of Geocentrix Ltd

16:30-17:00 Some things Eurocode 7 doesnt say

Brian Simpson, Arup, UK

17:00-17:30 Comparison of EC7 design approaches for numerical analysis of deep

excavations
Helmut Schweiger, Graz University of Technology, Austria

17:30-18:00 Geotechnical design in seismic conditions

Giuseppe Scarpelli, University of Ancona, Italy

18:00-18:30 Design of top-to-down deep excavations for a metro-line in soft ground

according to EC7 and German Recommendations
Christos Vrettos, Technical University of Kaiserslautern, Germany

Coffee break 18:30-19:00

2nd session 19:00-20:40 chaired by Prof Trevor Orr from the Trinity College of Dublin

19:00-19:20 Case history of an anchored retaining wall design in sloping ground

David Beadman, Director of Byrne Looby Partners

19:20-19:40
Evan Passaris, Technical Director of Atkins

19:40-20:00 Copenhagen basement, Canary Wharf piles and other challenges

Stuart Pennington, Arup

20:00-20:20 Reflections from the practical application of EC7 and EC2 on pile design in the
UK
Dimitrios Selemetas, Skanska

20:20-20:40 Design and construction of T2B using Eurocodes

James Straw, Mott McDonald

Sponsors

The workshop is supported by Arup and the European Institute, UCL. Georgios Katsigiannis, as a
member of the UCL Geomechanics and Materials Group, being awarded the Junior Researcher 2012-
13 Grant, ensured funding for the organisation of the event. For more information about the
European Institute visit http://www.ucl.ac.uk/european-institute/

For more details please contact:

Location
Roberts 508 Room Georgios Katsigiannis
Roberts Building, Torrington Place Research Engineer | UCL | ARUP
University College London [email protected]
London WC1E 7JE [email protected]