The revision of Eurocode 7 "Geotechnical design" begins - Preparatory works, mandate and first discussions

The revision of Eurocode 7 „Geotechnical design“ begins – preparatory works, mandate and first discussions. The article describes European and German preparatory work for the new Eurocode 7 (EN 1997). A leading role had the German initiative PraxisRegelnBau (PRB) and its Project Group Geotechnics (PG6), which simultaneously acted as a working group of the German mirror committees of DIN responsible for the two parts of EN 1997. Streamlining the text of both parts to enhance their ease of use and the preparation of proposals for geotechnical calculation models for informative annexes in EN 1997 had highest priority. The new EN 1997 „Geotechnical design“ will consist of three parts: Part 1 „General rules“ (EN 1997-1), Part 2 „Ground investigation” (EN 1997-2) and Part 3 „Geotechnical constructions “ (EN 1997-3). In meetings of SC7 in 2015 and 2016 concepts for changes and amendments of the future EN 1997 were discussed and in April 2017 a first draft of part 1 „General rules“ was presented. An important change is planned for Part 2 „Ground investigation”, the contents of which will be focused on geotechnical parameter for design instead of field and laboratory tests. A heated discussion came up by the proposal in the draft on EN 1997-1 to adopt the classification system of the informative Annex B of EN 1990 and further geotechnical classifications in the core text of EN 1997-1. These classifications should partly be coupled with a reduction and/or an increase in the partial factors of safety. Many delegates did not approve of this and a compromise was found by moving the classification system into an informative annex.