The evolution of European masonry brick standardization
This contribution provides a brief overview of how European product and design standards are evolving with regard to clay masonry bricks – beginning with the 1988 Construction Products Directive up to and including the introduction of Eurocodes for masonry construction in 2014. This lengthy, at times tedious process is recounted as experienced by the German clay masonry brick industry, beginning with German standards DIN 105 and DIN 1053 and leading up to European standards DIN EN 771-1 and DIN EN 1996 (Eurocode 6).
1 Introduction
In the late 1980s, it was still widely believed that a few meetings would suffice for drafting a generally acceptable set of pan-European standards. Unfortunately, though, that process involves such a wide variety of national interests in the form of different test methods, nonuniform requirements and protection levels, and even wholly disparate concepts of product description, that it ended up taking much longer.
In the course of a long, slow harmonization process, the German brick and tile industry‘s representatives found themselves confronted with a pile of technical and, above...
