“The coefficient of thermal expansion for steel is 0.00000645in/in/deg F.

My maths say that a ship at 1181 feet, is 14,172 inches long. Lets say for arguments sake the ship went from 60F to 80F. That works out at 1.81".

Well well would you believe it, I didn't until I worked it out!

Except I find it much easier to work in metric units... All the conversion factors are contrived to be exactly 1 (with the exception of the fundamentals such as pi, e, h, etc...).

For an obvious everyday example, note the expansion joints running across roads for road bridges... Some USA bridges failed in recent years and killed a few people because of the extra stress due to some (big) roller bearings needed for expansion of the structure having had corroded solid...

Expansion/contraction and flexing are designed into aircraft. I've looked at that and then also on another design I had to go to great lengths (bad pun) to design and build a computer controlled instrument for nanofabrication such that temperature changes didn't cause the work area to shift away to oblivion. At nm scales, a mm is as good as a million miles away!

Then also, an inch of expansion can cause disaster if your drive shafts, pipes, and cabling can't stretch or flex that far for your ship...


Keep searchin',
Martin

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