Rock engineering design in tomorrow’s geotechnical toolbox: Eurocode and the basis of structural and geotechnical design (the second generation of EN 1990 and EN 1997)

Abstract

he current first generation of Eurocodes is a suite of ten Euro-pean standards for the design of buildings and civil engineeringworks, whose implementation started in 2010. EN 1990 sets thebasis of structural design, with the other Eurocodes dealingwith different materials and specific aspects of design. Geo-technical aspects of design are covered by EN 1997 “Geotech-nical design”, usually called Eurocode 7. The evolution of the Eurocodes started in 2012 and the main ob-jectives of their revision were to incorporate improvements thatreflect the state-of-the-art in engineering design and the needsof the civil engineering market, to improve the ease-of-use andto harmonize practice between countries. While the originalversion was developed largely based on soil mechanics, theaim was that the revised version treats soil and rock on anequal basis. The second generation of the Eurocodes is now nearly finished,and the revised EN 1997 is expected to be formally approved in2024. This paper is the first of a set of six informative papers onthe revised Eurocodes and rock engineering, prepared bymembers of the Rock Engineering Platform of CEN/TC250/SC7,a group of rock engineering experts that has been assisting indrafting EN 1997 from a rock-engineering perspective. Thepaper presents the main changes to EN 1990 and EN 1997 asfar as they affect geotechnical and rock engineering design.