Eurocode 5 - Design of timber structures

The decision to open up European borders to allow the free circulation of construction products within the European Economic Area led, among other things, to the development of common technical standards. This provided an opportunity to update the rules governing construction design and calculation, and to establish up-to-date requirements for better assessment of both product quality and construction safety. The new rules have been drawn up on the basis of the latest knowledge, and have also been extended to include new materials and innovative techniques. For timber construction, these rules are finalized in a standard known as Eurocode 5.

In France, this European approach has led to a number of changes in the outlook of applicators and in timber construction practices. Whereas, until then, the rules for justifying timber structures, which were intended to guarantee a certain degree of structural safety, were based on a deterministic approach and a concept of permissible stresses, the new rules in Eurocode 5, as in all other Eurocodes dealing with various other construction methods, are established on common fundamental principles and are based on a semi-probabilistic theoretical approach. This different concept is fairly new to the French timber construction industry.

It is proposed here to present the general rules of Eurocode 5, part 1-1, by indicating the main lines:

• objectives ;

• field of application ;

• original features ;

• new topics covered ;

• the corresponding calculation methods ;

• changes to the old rules.