[Alberta's Child]

It seems like some basic fundamentals about tensile and compressive strength of materials may have been ignored here.

There are several important reasons why steel displaced iron as the preferred material for structural framing in buildings and bridges long ago. One big one is that steel deforms as it fails, while iron tends to fracture suddenly with little or no warning.

[griffin]

its all inherent in the material. Iron is brittle. Steel alloys - and there are hundreds - are all tailored for the use they are asked to perform.