In 1975, the Commission of the European Community decided on an action programme in the field of construction, whose objective was the harmonisation of technical specifications. The Commission took the initiative to establish a set of harmonised technical rules for the design of construction works which, in a first stage, would serve as an alternative to the national rules in force in the Member States and, ultimately, would replace them. As a first step, the Commission, with the help of a Steering Committee with Representatives of Member States, conducted the development of the Eurocodes programme. This first generation of the Eurocodes was published in the beginning of the 1990’s as the so-called ENV version of the Eurocodes. At this time, the Commission and the Member States of the EU and EFTA decided to transfer the preparation and the publication of the Eurocodes to the European Committee for Standardisation (CEN) in order to provide them with a future status of European Standard (EN).
After all the documents were finalised by the relevant CEN project teams they were published initially in English with the majority also available in French and German) along with the National Annexes, which provide some national adaptations, prepared by the National Standardisation Bodies. The EN Eurocodes were formally introduced by the Member States in 2007. The Eurocode are now the unique design standards for the construction industry in Europe and have also been adopted outside Europe. However, little material is available to support the application and the teaching of the Eurocodes. With respect to the design of steel structures and especially as far as steel structures made with hollow sections are concerned, complementary material to available books such as the CIDECT book for students (“Hollow Sections in Structural Applications” by J. Wardenier) should be made available. Teachers (in universities) and technical marketing responsibles (in industry) have not enough available time to prepare updated material for training and education, or sometimes do not have the required background as they have not been involved in the development of the Eurocodes.
To support teaching the use of the EN version of the Eurocode 3 (and Eurocode 4), a full set of lectures (presentations in PowerPoint format and lectures in Word format) was produced in the frame of a large project funded by the European Commission. The project was called SSEDTA and was completed in 2000. This material is freely available without any copyright. However, it is no more in line with the current EN versions of the Eurocodes. Few projects are running to prepare such material (e.g. STEEL project), but these lectures are general lectures for the design of steel structures. No special attention is given to hollow sections. Quite a number of worked examples are given, but typically focussing on structures made of open sections. Therefore, CIDECT has decided to launch a project in order to prepare updated material to support training and education for the implementation of the new EN version of Eurocode 3. The objective is to support the promotion and the application of the forthcoming EN standards for the construction industry (Eurocodes). As these standards do not contain sufficient background information (and certainly no worked examples) to ensure a safe and economic use of the design standards, additional and complementary information is required. With financial support from CIDECT, this project has been carried out by the ArGEnCo Department of the University of Liège (Belgium) and by Feldmann + Weynand GmbH (Aachen, Germany) in cooperation with the University of Karlsruhe.
The CIDECT lectures have been prepared with the financial support of CIDECT. However, they are made available without any copyright. The full set of lectures is available at the CIDECT web site (www.cidect.com), and can be downloaded for free. Since the files are not protected, it is explicitly allowed that the user modifies the content of the PowerPoint presentations and of the lectures according to his personal needs. The user may even customise the material by using his own name and the name and logo of his school, university or company. However CIDECT would appreciate if a reference to the CIDECT organisation and to the origin of the material is kept. Care has been taken to ensure that all data and information in the CIDECT lectures is factual and that numerical values are accurate. To the best of our knowledge, all information in the CIDECT lectures is accurate at the time of publication. CIDECT, its members and the authors assume no responsibility for errors or Care has been taken to ensure that all