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Cast iron is not a good structural material for handling tension or bending moments because of its brittleness and relatively low tensile strength compared to steel and wrought iron. However, cast iron does have good compressive strength and was successfully used for structural components that were largely in compression in well-designed ...
Steel is an alloy composed of between 0.2 and 2.0 percent carbon, with the balance being iron. From prehistory through the creation of the blast furnace, iron was produced from iron ore as wrought iron, 99.82–100 percent Fe, and the process of making steel involved adding carbon to iron, usually in a serendipitous manner, in the forge, or via the cementation process.
Use of wrought iron in construction has a long history (cramps made from wrought iron were used in classical antiquity). [6] The first all-wrought iron roof was apparently installed in 1837 at the Euston railway station in London. [7] Frame of the Crystal Palace. Beams and girders were made of wrought iron with I-beam cross-section. The ...
He gained patents for the process in 1855 and 1856 and successfully completed the conversion of cast iron into cast steel in 1858. [21] Eventually mild steel would replace both wrought iron and cast iron as the preferred metal for construction.
A roll of steel wool. Iron and steel are used widely in the construction of roads, railways, other infrastructure, appliances, and buildings. Most large modern structures, such as stadiums and skyscrapers, bridges, and airports, are supported by a steel skeleton. Even those with a concrete structure employ steel for reinforcing.
In 1945, the US produced 67% of the world's pig iron, and 72% of the steel. By comparison, 2014 percentages were 2.4% of the pig iron, and 5.3% of the steel production. Although US iron and steel output continued to grow overall through the 1950s and 1960s, the world steel industry grew much faster, and the US share of world production shrank.
The use of steel instead of iron for structural purposes was initially slow. The first iron-framed building, Ditherington Flax Mill, had been built in 1797, but it was not until the development of the Bessemer process in 1855 that steel production was made efficient enough for steel to be a widely used material. Cheap steels, which had high ...
The basic process, the Thomas-Gilchrist process, remained in use longer, especially in Continental Europe, where iron ores were of high phosphorus content [35] and the open-hearth process was not able to remove all phosphorus; almost all inexpensive construction steel in Germany was produced with this method in the 1950s and 1960s. [36]