Material Mechanisms and Dynamic Loading

Matter respond to dynamic impulses with a variety of mechanisms. Each has it's own kinetics and threshold for operation triggered by the impulse applied. When a crystalline material is exposed to extremes of pressure such mechanisms include martensitic phase transformation, dislocation nucleation and propagation,~twinning and potentially melting. The length of the applied impulse thus determines the regimes of applicability of a physical model constructed from such data. A parameter is introduced to describe this quantity and is applied to examples drawn from a variety of crystalline responses showing the suite of available mechanisms and the range of observables that result.