Structural steel

Assembled from 12 blocks · 1 evidence · 12 related

1. Story
2. Iron alloyed with a controlled small fraction of carbon, strong in both compression and tension and, unlike cast iron, ductile rather than brittle. Before the mid-19th century steel was a craft product made in small batches and priced accordingly; the change is metallurgical and economic rather than architectural. Henry Bessemer described his converter process to the British Association at Cheltenham in 1856, blowing air through molten pig iron to burn out carbon and silicon and using the heat of that oxidation itself rather than external fuel; the Siemens-Martin open-hearth process followed and dominated for decades because it handled scrap and gave better control. The result was structural steel at a fraction of its former cost and in large repeatable sections. Ductility is the property that matters for buildings: a steel frame deforms visibly before it fails, which is a different and much more forgiving failure mode than the sudden fracture of cast iron.
3. Knowledge
4. Structural steel
5. Connections
6. The steel skeleton frame
7. Reinforced concrete
8. Bessemer describes the converter to the British Association
9. The Hennebique system makes reinforced concrete a frame
10. Burj Khalifa opens at 828 m
11. Evidence
12. Description of the converter process in which air blown through molten pig iron removes carbon and silicon, the heat of oxidation sustaining the process without external fuel - the step that made bulk steel cheap. V55 verification basis: the paper and occasion are established record; the text was not consulted in this session and the exact title wording should be confirmed.