Eurocodes—failing to standardise safety

The first of Europe's new suite of structural design standards— the EN or ‘Eurocode’ series—are being published this year and, before the end of the decade, will have replaced all existing European national codes. * This paper demonstrates that the codes as drafted could lead to widely varying safety levels within a given structure and increase the risk of catastrophic failure. By way of example it looks at the probability of structural steel bolts, beams and plate girders falling below their design strength and shows that the proposed Eurocode 3 design expressions could lead to some components being expensively over-designed and other parts becoming a dangerously weak link. To get around the problem it proposes the introduction of hidden safety factors in the Eurocode design equations, ensuring greater harmonisation in reliability of structural components, reduced cost and increased structural safety.