Development of a new generation EN 408 testing standard

Structural Eurocodes and product standards are closely linked and relate to the design of structures and civil engineering works. They are widely used in practice, in research and by industry throughout Europe. Most of the properties of wood and wood products are determined by testing, some additional values derived by calculation using established laws and equations. The general rules for testing timber are indicated in the testing standard EN 408. The current standard EN 408 dates from 2010 and the amendment A1 from 2012 and is limited to solid wood and glued laminated timber. The standard is currently under revision to make it consistent with design standards and product standards. The structure of the standard will be improved, errors deleted and extended to new engineered wood prod-ucts. It is however not easy to harmonise sample sizes, testing and measuring configurations and to test for the proper-ties of interest being consistent with results obtained in the past. This paper presents the planned amendments, discusses crucial issues and indicates some open questions to be solved in a next step.