Eu Product Standard for Eps and Performance Requirements

As a result of the EU policy to strengthen the European Union by encouraging free trade of building products between member countries, product standards for almost hundred building product groups were created over the past 20 years. The product standard for EPS in Civil Engineering Applications (EN 14933) came into force in March 2009. This presentation will focus first on the results of the implementation of the product standard EN 14933 in the EU, the consequences for designers, engineers, authorities and contractors when applying EPS in civil engineering under the title: "expanding possibilities?". Nevertheless in between it came clear that per country different performance requirements still existed and that the relation between performance requirements and product properties also differs. This has to be solved and the second part of the presentation will focus on the outcome of an inventory by a special Task Force of EUMEPS, including the use of Eurocodes which are mandatory since last year. EU STANDARDISATION PROGRAM Construction Products Directive The Construction Products Directive (CPD, EU98/106) came into force in 1990; and the European standardizations institute "Conseil Européenne de Normalisation" (CEN) was mandated by the EU to establish a number of harmonized product standards. CEN Technical Committee TC 88 was commissioned not only to create standards for insulation materials but also for rigid foams in civil engineering applications (CEA) as Expanded Polystyrene (EPS), Extruded Polystyrene Foam (XPS) and Expanded Clay beads; this in close corporation with CEN TC 227 "Road Materials". In 2001 the draft standard for EPS was completed, nevertheless it took years to issue the final document as a result of harmonization with the XPS draft standard and editorial changes of Annexes by the EU and CEN. EN 14933 [1] was approved by CEN at 13 July 2007 and the three standards came into force as a package in March 2009 and is a mandatory standard for all EU member states since the 1 of January 2010. Harmonized European standards (hEN's) These harmonized European standards have the same format: a number of product properties are mentioned (divided in those for all applications and those for specific applications), the accompanying determination method (a testing procedure), rules for marking and labeling and obligations on the level of third party quality assurance. Products as placed on the market have to