Abstract
Industry has developed materials with ultra-low expansion coefficients of, in some cases, below 1*10-8 degrees C-1. This has produced a growing requirement for the measurement of thermal expansion and the assessment of the dimensional stability of such materials. A fully automatic absolute dilatometer system with a subnanometre resolution has been developed at the NPL to meet this need. The instrument and its performance are discussed, together with some results that have been obtained for steel, spectrosil and Zerodur.

This publication has 4 references indexed in Scilit: