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Principal features of the behavior of materials subjected to short pulsed loads are
common for a number of seemingly different physical processes including such as
dynamic fracture, yielding, cavitation, etc. In this paper examples illustrating
typical dynamic effects inherent in these processes are analyzed. A unified
approach to fracture and yielding in solids is proposed. Examples of different
physical processes considered in the presentation show the fundamental
importance of investigating the incubation processes preparing abrupt structural
changes in continua under intense pulsed impacts. As an application of this
approach some of the effects of anomalous behavior of yielding in materials
subjected to intense short pulsed impacts (collisions with elementary particles)
under elevated temperatures will be discussed. It will be shown that for high rate
loaded material, increase of a sample temperature results in increase of critical
yielding stress. This can result in brittle micro-cracking and damage of heated
material irradiated by high energy particles.