What is Thermal Stress It is known that an object will contract or expand when the temperature changes.

This contraction and expansion process can cause a thermal stress on an object if there is interference from contacting another part, or if the part is made out of different types of materials. Thermal expansion is the tendency of matter to change in volume in response to a change in temperature. When a substance is heated, its particles begin moving more and thus usually maintain a greater average separation. Materials which contract with increasing temperature are rare; this effect is limited in size, and only occurs within limited temperature ranges (see examples below). The degree of expansion divided by the change in temperature is called the material's coefficient of thermal expansion and generally varies with temperature.

Coefficient of thermal expansion

The coefficient of thermal expansion describes how the size of an object changes with a change in temperature. Specifically, it measures the fractional change in size per degree change in temperature at a constant pressure. Several types of coefficients have been developed: volumetric, area, and linear. Which is used depends on the particular application and which dimensions are considered important. For solids, one might only be concerned with the change along a length, or over some area. The volumetric thermal expansion coefficient is the most basic thermal expansion coefficient. In general, substances expand or contract when their temperature changes, with expansion or contraction occurring in all directions. Substances that expand at the same rate in every direction are called isotropic. For isotropic materials, the area and linear coefficients may be calculated from the volumetric coefficient. Mathematical definitions of these coefficients are defined below for solids, liquids, and gasses. General volumetric thermal expansion coefficient In the general case of a gas, liquid, or solid, the volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion is given by

THE COEFFICIENT OF LINEAR thermal expansion (CTE, , or 1) is a material property that is indicative of the extent to which a material expands upon heating. Different substances expand by different amounts. Over small temperature ranges, the thermal expansion of uniform linear objects is proportional to temperature change. Thermal expansion finds useful application in bimetallic strips for the construction of thermometers but can generate detrimental internal stress when a structural part is heated and kept at constant length.

Linear thermal expansion analysis determines material expansion rates. Linear Thermal Expansion (LTE) testing helps determine if failure by thermal stress may occur in products and materials. The basis of CTE Materials expand because an increase in temperature leads to greater thermal vibration of the atoms in a material, and hence to an increase in the average separation distance of adjacent atoms. The linear coefficient of thermal expansion a (Greek letter alpha) describes by how much a material will expand for each degree of temperature increase, as given by the formula:

where: dl = the change in length of material in the direction being measured l = overall length of material in the direction being measured dT = the change in temperature over which dl is measured