This paper describes the experimental work and presents the results of a research program - carried out to investigate the thermal expansion behavior of sedimentary rocks under high stress conditions. The aspects that were inves tigated include the effects of temperature,temperature cycling, and confining pressure . Furthermore, the validity of the usual assumption on thermal expansion isotropy was investigated. On the other hand, the matrix thermal expansion concept is analyzed and its physical meaning and aplications are discussed. The effect of termperature on porosity is also a subject investigated regarding experimental methods for its estimation and comparison of earlier results. The experiments carried out consisted basically of thermal strain versus temperature measurements on jacketed and unjacketed samples subjected to different confining pressures and covering the temperature range from 25OC to 28OOC and the pressure range from 3.0 MPa to 34.4 MPa. A review of earlier work is included as a reference frame to discuss and compare the results of this work, as well as to emphasize the limited extent of the research on thermal expansion behavior of sedimentary rocks that had been accomplished. Results are presented by means of thermal strain versus temperature curves and tabular data of thermal expansion coefficients. Several important conclusions for laborarory and field appli cations are reached from each of the aspects investigated. The wide research scope of considerable amount of data reported may represent an important contribution to the knowledge of thermal expansion behavior of sedimentary rocks.

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