Description

Most solid materials expand when heated through a temperature range that does not produce a change in the phase of the material. This expansion is called “thermal expansion”. Over small temperature ranges, the thermal expansion of uniform linear objects is proportional to their temperature changes. The expansion of the solid object depends on its original size and its temperature change:

where, Δl is the increase in length,α is the coefficient of linear expansion for a given particular material, l1 is the original length of the object and ΔT is the temperature change.