Sorry to go off in a tangent, but this discussion reminded me of a question that has always puzzled me: If you have a sheet of metal with a hole in it (a ring would not work in this example because it is too thin), what happens to the hole when the metal is heated? Would the hole get bigger, smaller, or stay the same size? A ring would expand, so the hole gets bigger. But when you have a large piece of metal around the hole, will the expanding metal cause the hole to become smaller?

 

If the metal was to expand then you'd get tensile strain in that region and if it were to contract then you'd get compression buckling probably.

I only thought about water when considering the heat = expand, cool = shrink because the first thing that popped into my head was that when water in a crack freezes it expands and spreads the crack further. I had a feeling that there was more to it thanks for the clarification.

 

All those are so time-consuming.