AS OF today, 42 of the 58 Eurocode parts can be purchased from British Standards Online (www.bsonline.bsi-global.com) and the remaining 16 parts are due out anytime soon. The UK National Annexes to accompany these codes will appear over the next 18 months, so that by 2009 everything will be in place to design structures - in concrete, steel, timber, masonry, and aluminium - to engineering rules and principles that are common throughout Europe. For structural engineers, the changes required to existing practice are relatively minor. As Chris Hendy, head of bridge design and technology at Atkins has said, the impact of Structural Eurocodes can be summed up as: "Same principles, different rules." However, for geotechnical engineers, whose practice has been far less codified than in other sectors, the introduction of Eurocode 7 represents a marked change in UK practice. The impact can be summed up as: 'Same rules, different principles'
展开▼
