An analysis was made of the kinetics of the transition between 2 variants of martensite during biaxial dead-loading. The volume fraction of one martensite variant exhibited an unusual hysteresis as a function of the applied load. This was characterized by a sensitive dependence upon the load amplitude, and by a dissipation-free response at low amplitudes. Observations of the microscopic volume fraction, at the level of a few bands of martensite, revealed that the principal mechanism by which one variant grew at the expense of another was a tip-splitting event. That is, the tips of martensite needles which were present in the specimen suddenly split. This led to the adoption of a form, for the energy, in which many little wiggles were superposed upon a slowly varying function that accounted for the effects of the loading device, elastic and interfacial energies. The resultant microscopic kinetic law was analyzed by deriving from it a macroscopic kinetic equation that governed the average response. The above kinetic law inherited a tendency to become stuck in local energy minima. This led to good qualitative agreement, and reasonable quantitative agreement, with observations over a very wide range of conditions.

R.Abeyaratne, C.Chu, R.D.James: Philosophical Magazine A, 1996, 73[2], 457-97