Development and improvement of geotechnical design methods and application of Eurocode 7

In order to avoid the inequality arising from many and different civil engineering standards, rulebooks etc. present in the EU, academicians and practicioners have initiated voting a decision in 1975 for removing them and replace with set o f harmonized technical rules, known as Eurocodes. They are covering parts from Eurocode 0 to Eurocode 9, among which is Eurocode 7 which is dedicated to geotechnical design. But, its realization, due to different geographical, geological and climate conditions which leaded to development o f different local calculation traditions, was more difficult and complicated than at others Eurocodes. Anyway, in the period between 1981 and 2004 it was working intensively on exceeding the obvious differences, and which produced different format o f this Eurocode. Namely, unlike others where structure designing is pretty clear, there are three design approaches offered in Eurocode 7 and sets o f partial factors which are to be used in them. After accepting Eurocode 7, each state has to decide on two very important decisions which are related exactly on the choice o f design approach according to which designing o f geotechnical structures is going to be performed and to define appropriate partial factors. Theoretical and numerical analyses and verifications are realized in this research for such purposes for spread foundations, slopes and retaining walls, which are most often present geotechnical structures in practice. The successful results have shown that the same principle, based on keeping the similar calculation procedure and same, proved, safety level as now, can also be used for the other geotechnical structures present in Eurocode 7