[chronogram]

Titanium's strength is in its weight: steel's Young modulus is almost twice as high, so you'd have to build rather large bridges to compensate. Titanium is useful where weight is a concern, like things you launch into space. Steel is perfect whenever weight isn't a concern and sometimes still works really well because you get so much strength out of so little which is why there are so many fans of the thin, shock absorbing, steel bike frames.

[Maarten88]

Titanium's advantage is imo not so much its weight, as aluminium is better still in that respect. Titanium is mostly better where corrosion and temperature resistance are important. Relative to weight, high grade steel, titanium and aluminium are about equal in tensile strength.

[gopalv]

> Titanium is mostly better where corrosion

Until we mix metals and have galvanic corrosion, where an Al + Ti system corrodes exactly where the metals touch.

It's not titanium that will corrode when you have an aluminium frame bike with a Ti bolt at the bottom bracket.

[yubblegum]

> Relative to weight, high grade steel, titanium and aluminium are about equal in tensile strength.

Scale of the artifact is also a variable if size is a constraint.

[sidewndr46]

Those steel bike frames don't have much in common with the steel used for structural steel. They both are iron alloys with added carbon content, the similarity stops there.

Similarly trying to compare "titanium" to "steel" is dumb. No one uses pure titanium for structural purposes & there are hundreds of common steel alloys.

[Mawr]

> thin, shock absorbing, steel bike frames

Please stop repeating this FUD. The notion that a rigid steel frame provides measurable shock absorbtion over the supple, air-filled, rubber tires is mind numbingly stupid.

[alasarmas]

Steel bikes feel “better” and “springier” than aluminum bikes. Objectively, they last longer than aluminum bikes.

What exact differences in physical properties or construction leads to this, I couldn’t tell you, but you can pick up an old steel bike frame for cheap and experience it yourself. Well-made steel frames are much lighter than poorly-made ones, so I would recommend finding one of the good ones.