Dear of troy: I'm not an engineer, but one of the most important properties of all ceramics and similar substances is that they resist compression very well, but are very vulnerable to elongation. I still remember a humiliation I suffered in seventh grade. The teacher asked me about the
shape of a dam. I said the concavity was directed upstream - exactly wrong!
Stresses to a serpentine wall are more likely to be
applied to convexity, causing compression, which it can
tolerate well.