Composite materials are known to be formed by a three-dimensional combination of components with different properties. In fiber composite materials the reinforcing components are one-or two-dimensional. It often happens that the structural components of a steel are arranged as in a fiber composite material (i.e., in the form of fibers directed along the rolling path). The difference in the components in such steels residues not only in their chemical composition, as in composite materials, but also in their structure. Such steels can be called materials with a natural composite structure, which in fact does not change anything. The present work is devoted to three kinds of structural steel with a structure of a natural composite.We investigated puddling iron, metal structures of which were used in frames of residential and civic buildings at the end of the last century. At present, interest in investigation of the properties of puddling iron stems not so much from study of the history of engineering but rather from reconstruction and restoration works in the center of Moscow.Modern steels with a "composite structure" [I, 2] are used in engineering structures. We investigated low-alloyed steels of this type strengthened by the thermomechanical method with deformation in the intercritical temperature range and shaped rolled stock strengthened by the method of interrupted quenching on the line of a high-speed mill.Specimens of puddling iron (0.1% C; 0.4-0.6% Mn; < 0.05% St, up to 0.1% S and P) were cut from hot-rolled flanges ofT-beams 12 mm thick. Specimens of steel 15G2SF strengthened by thermomechanical treatment were cut from a strip 12 mm thick. In order to form a composite structure in rolled stock with allowance for the data of [3 -5], we conducted the treatment by the following regimes: austenitization at 930°C, cooling to t=Ar3-50°C (Ar3=680°C, Ar t = 540°C), a hold with subsequent deformation with e = 50% in one pass, and cooling in water. Control specimens were subjected to a similar treatment but without deformation. The tempering regimes are presented in Table !. We also used specimens (angles 100 x 100 × 10 mm in size) of steels strengthened on the line of a ZSMK mill 450 [6,7] by interrupted quenching and subsequent self-tempering, namely, steel St3ps with ~0_, =400-500N/ram 2 and steels 08KhGSDP and 10KhSND with an elevated resistance to atmospheric corrosion.