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Issue 06/2012 - STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING | TRAGWERKSPLANUNG

Introduction of the Eurocodes in Germany
Europe can be likened to two elephants making love: it stirs up a lot of dust and takes a
long time until results are achieved. (Willy Brandt, 1913-1992, German politician)
This year, the introduction of the structural engineering Eurocodes in Germany marks
another step on a long path that began more than 50 years ago, with the ultimate objective
of establishing the free movement of goods in Europe. On 25 March 1957, the then
European Council signed the Treaty of Rome and adopted actions which have as their
object the establishment and functioning of the internal market (Article 95 of the Treaty of
Rome). Another milestone on this route was the White Book published by the European
Commission that preceded the Single European Act of 1985. It listed almost 300 measures
that were considered necessary for establishing a European single market and gave rise to
an identical number of directives.
As part of this endeavor, the 1989 Construction Products Directive [1] was to ensure the free
movement of goods within the European Union in the field of construction products. This
objective was to be achieved by establishing a common technical vocabulary set forth in
European product standards and approvals, which, in turn, required European design
codes in order to rely on a common basis. In this context, the Eurocodes cover the area of
structural engineering.
As early as in the 1980s, the predecessors of todays Eurocodes had been prepared by
international groups of experts on behalf of the European Commission without the
European legal framework referred to above. On the basis of the Model Code [2] drafted by
the international federations CEB and FIP (which were merged in 1998 to form the
international precast concrete federation, fib), a first Eurocode 2 draft was prepared, which
became part of the system of German standards at the end of 1991 as the preliminary
standard ENV 1992-1-1 and was subsequently integrated as DIN V ENV 1992-1-1 by the
German Institute for Standardization in the middle of 1992. Overall, the ENV 1992 series
included nine parts [3].
Since these were only preliminary standards, no withdrawal of national standards was
required, which resulted in the option of applying the Eurocodes as an alternative to DIN
1045 [4]. A survey conducted among the CEN member states in 1994 showed that the pre-
standards needed to be transferred to final, binding standards. The European Commission
issued a mandate for the associated revision activities [5]; this mandate defined the
underlying framework (see also [6]).
Following a phase of fundamental revision (such as reducing the number of Eurocode 2
parts), publication of the second generation of Eurocodes started in 2002. Further editorial
changes and several corrections led to the publication of the 2010/11 German versions of
the Eurocodes by DIN, which are now in the process of being officially introduced.

The nationally adjusted Eurocode
In 1996, the German Committee for Structural Concrete (DAfStb) decided to prepare a
national design standard (DIN 1045-1) that was to come very close to the European set of
standards because the German design standards applicable in the mid-1990s, DIN 1045
[4] and DIN 4227 [7], did no longer represent the state of the art according to experts whilst
the amount of work to be done at the European level was very hard to estimate. The
prevailing opinion was that the transition effort required in the event of a later introduction of
the European standards would be minor, if at all existent, due to the close linkage to the
concept of European standards (...) [8].
Since the European design concept was introduced already by this intermediate national
step of implementing DIN-1045-1 [9], German experts have been applying the nationally
adjusted Eurocode at least since 2005. For this reason, the transition effort to be made this
year will indeed be minor from a technical point of view, as predicted by the DAfStb 16 years
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ago. However, this process will require additional efforts, such as
familiarization with the formal and editorial characteristics of the Eurocodes,
purchase of new literature and design software,
an increased amount of further training.

Eurocodes and product standards
The Construction Products Directive [1] (which has recently been replaced with [10])
contains basic requirements for construction products and structures, which include
structural integrity, fire resistance and safety in use. The European product standards
governing precast elements make reference to Eurocode 2 to comply with the basic
requirements No. 1, Structural Integrity, and No. 2, Fire Safety. Fig. 1 lists other important
reference standards. This representation reveals significant differences between the
European and the German system. DIN 1045-1 [11] was also aligned with the European set
of standards because not all precast elements (such as solid floor slabs) are governed by
European product standards.
In general, the question arises whether the objective of establishing the free movement of
goods is at all achievable for structural precast components. These are not traded in the
strict sense of the word because each element is a product tailored to a specific position
within a structure. In addition, the scope of movement of structural precast components
across Europe is limited by design because of the high amount of transport and the
associated cost.
On the other hand, Central European countries have always benefited most from the
European idea and its practical implementation. Countries such as Germany are in a
particularly good position that opens up huge opportunities in the construction sector. It
remains to be seen whether these opportunities will actually be seized.
Eurocodes and their National Annexes
The ten Eurocodes pertaining to structural engineering (EN 1990 to EN 1999) comprise a
total of 58 parts, which deal with all aspects of the individual fields (Fig. 2). Eurocode 2
(EC2) governing the design of precast elements consists of four parts [12], [13], of which
Part 2 pertaining to bridges and Part 3 governing containment structures merely contain
supplementary design rules and can only be applied in conjunction with the main part, EC2
Part 1-1. Part 1-2 of EC2 covers fire safety design (Fig. 3). Each Eurocode part is
complemented by a National Annex (NA), which contains the following:
figures for nationally determined parameters (NDP), such as partial safety factors,
country-specific data, such as maps showing snow or earthquake zones,
rules for the application of the informative annexes,
non-contradictory complementary information (NCI).
The so-called NCI documents provide a certain room for interpretation as to whether a
complementary part is contradictory or not. For example, the German National Annex to EC2
Part 1-1 contains over 100 pages of NCI (i.e. four fifths of the document). Unfortunately, not
all of this information is non-contradictory to the original Eurocode. As demonstrated when
looking more closely at the situation in Austria, other countries did not succeed either in fully
implementing the requirement of non-contradictory information. In Austria, a new National
Annex was published in 2011 [14] that contains a range of complementary national
documents and explanations that had not been included in the previous version [15].
Despite all efforts made to implement European design standards, it should be noted, on
the basis of the National Annexes, that national rules and safety levels, and thus national
standards, continue to exist. All parties involved should endeavor to reduce these national
differences to a minimum in the future.
To facilitate application in Germany, the relevant DIN committees issue so-called manuals
that contain both the Eurocode texts and the wording of the associated National Annexes.
Two volumes are planned for Eurocode 2 [16]:
Vol. 1: General rules (with EC2 Parts 1-1, 1-2 and 3);
Vol. 2: Concrete bridges.
Nearer the time of the official introduction of the Eurocodes, the German Committee for
Structural Concrete (DAfStb) will publish its Vol. 600 [17] as an additional design aid
containing explanations and background information on Eurocode 2.

Eurocode 2 for precast elements
General
One of the particular features of EC2 Part 1-1 is its Section 10, which contains additional
rules for precast elements. However, Sections 1 to 9 also include basic design rules for
precast components (Fig. 4). Section 10.9 contains specific construction rules, such as for
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notched supports or bucket and block foundations. These specifications, however, do not
give rise to any new conclusions (Fig. 5).

Concrete cover
Section 4.4.1.3 (3) of the National Annex includes the general option of reducing the cover
Dc
dev
by 5 mm if an appropriate quality control system is in place. However, Section 10
contains an additional rule for precast components, according to which the cover Dc
dev
may also be reduced by more than 5 mm pursuant to NA.10.4 for precast components if
adherence to the minimum concrete cover is verified for the finished element. Any reduction
in Dc
dev
below 5 mm is not permissible (see further information in [17]).

Punching shear verification
In this area, the verifications of foundations are of particular interest to precast construction.
For example, compact foundations having a slenderness of l 2.0 initially require the
iterative determination of the critical section a
crit
, which involves an additional computation
step. By contrast, a critical section of a
crit
= 1.0 d is assumed for foundation slabs and
slender foundations.
The minimum shear resistance value v
min
previously used for verifying shear resistance is
now also applied to punching shear resistance. This approach results in greater resistance
without punching shear reinforcement in the case of thick elements with correspondingly
low longitudinal reinforcement ratios and high concrete strengths. In foundations with
punching shear reinforcement, the reduced effective shear force V
Ed,red
must be taken up
by the reinforcement without deducting any share to be resisted by the concrete (Fig. 6).

Deformation limit state
Limiting the span-to-depth ratio is one of the options for performing a simplified verification
of deformation. For this verification, the required reinforcement ratio and the steel stresses
must be known. Strictly speaking, this means that this method is only suitable for a final
design verification. Parameters thus need to be estimated in advance for the purpose of
predimensioning. This poses the risk that the estimate is either too conservative, and thus
commercially unviable, or unsafe, which would mean that the entire structural verification
would need to be repeated using more accurate parameters.
The degree of deformation tends to decrease in line with higher concrete strength classes
and lower loading, which leads to an increase in the permissible span-to-depth ratios and
to a reduction in the required element thicknesses (Fig. 7). The span-to-depth ratio criteria
may no longer be applied to prestressed concrete components. In these cases,
deformation control can only be verified by direct calculation methods.

Reduction in the partial safety factor for concrete
The only rule contained in Annex A that was released for application in Germany is the
option of reducing the partial safety factor for concrete to
C
= 1.35 if the concrete strength is
verified for the finished structural component (see further information in [17]).

Introduction of the Eurocodes
The structural engineering parts of the Eurocodes to be officially introduced were
announced in the publication of the draft list of technical building regulations (Musterliste
der Technischen Baubestimmungen; MLTB [18]) in December 2011. This version is
scheduled for introduction in the individual countries on 1 July 2012. The official introduction
of the Eurocode parts pertaining to bridge construction is scheduled for 1 December 2012.
The prohibition of combining old and new rules is abolished to continue to be able to
design all types of structural frameworks without restrictions. This means that it will still be
permissible to design individual structural components according to the old rules until all
Eurocodes have been officially introduced, provided that these components form separate
substructures within the overall structural framework and that a meaningful transfer of
parameters from one substructure to the other is ensured (Fig. 8a).
Accordingly, when applying national technical approvals and type tests that still refer to old
rules, the relevant structural component shall be designed according to the rules and
standards referred to in the type test or approval whilst the adjoining structural framework
shall be designed in accordance with the Eurocodes (Fig. 8b). DIN 4149 continues to apply
to the verification of earthquake resistance until the introduction of Eurocode 8. All
references to DIN 1045-1 shall be replaced with references to Eurocode 2 (see also MLTB,
Annex 5.1/1).

Future of the Eurocodes
Prior to the implementation of the Eurocodes in Germany, the members of the relevant
Content Management by I n t e r Re d
European committee (CEN/TC 250) are already working on the third generation of
Eurocodes whose completion is scheduled for 2018 according to current plans. In very
much the same way as 13 years ago, these activities rely on a mandate issued by the
European Commission [19]. The CEN answer to the mandate [20] includes the following
provisions for the Eurocodes 2018:
to reduce the nationally determined parameters (NDP) and non-contradictory
complementary information (NCI),
to improve the clarity of the codes,
to avoid the inclusion of rules and provisions that are far removed from reality.
In addition, Eurocode 2 should be extended to include provisions on fiber-reinforced
concrete and the reinforcement of structural concrete components and existing structures.
Our entire life is an eternal new beginning. (Hugo von Hofmannsthal, 1874-1929, Austrian
novelist)
Related articles:
Eurocode 2 or DIN 4102-4?
Structural fire design of precast concrete elements
Structural fire design of concrete elements shall be done according to DIN
EN 1992-1-2 (Eurocode 2
Workshop on Eurocode 2 - Interpretation questions
Building materials, durability, compression members
By the publication of the lists of technical building regulations in the
German Federal States,
New EN 13369
Product standards for precast concrete elements
The number of European product standards for precast concrete
elements has been increased to 40 by
Eurocodes and German Annexes in English
Beuth Verlag GmbH provides a new online service especially for foreign
construction companies by
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Eurocode 2
On July 1, 2012, Eurocode 2 will be introduced in Germany on a
mandatory basis and it replaces the
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