Deviatoric stress: a nuisance or a gold mine?

Both synchrotron radiation and deviatoric stress were once considered to be nuisances. Now synchrotron radiation is one of the most important tools available to scientists of all disciplines and deviatoric stress is one of the most useful aspects of x-ray diffraction at extreme conditions. Samples in high-pressure devices are under true hydrostatic pressure only when surrounded by a fluid, thus limiting true hydrostatic pressure studies at ambient temperatures to pressures below about 11 GPa. Elevated temperature is able to extend this limit but has rarely been used for this purpose. Instead, noble gases have been used as pressure media as their solids are especially soft. Deviatoric stress and resultant anisotropic elastic strain in solid samples and solid media have led to many subtle errors in determinations of elastic properties and crystal structures, especially in the days before it was realized that they could be measured and were potentially a valuable source of information. In recent years, measuring anisotropic elastic strain by x-ray diffraction has provided new insights into materials strength, elastic properties, crystal structures, mechanisms of phase transitions, slip systems, lattice preferred orientation, and, of course, ways to make corrections when deviatoric stress is indeed a nuisance.