Temperature Stress

(Russian, termicheskoe napriazhenie), a stress caused by a change in the thermal state of a body upon heating, cooling, or prolonged exposure to elevated or low temperatures. For example, the hardening of steel parts produces temperature stresses. In this case the temperature stresses are a combination of the stresses resulting from the change in the specific volume of steel that has undergone martensitic transformation during hardening and the thermal stresses caused by quenching. The effect of temperature stresses—for example, fracture or cracking during hardening—may not be apparent during quenching but may take some time, even several days, to develop as a result of a gradual stress buildup caused by changes in the specific volumes of structural members.