Weak Martensitic transformations in Bravais lattices (Q911832)

Considered are phase transitions of crystals from the point of view of their elastic properties. The typical example the author has in mind is the BCC-FCC phase transition (body-centured to face-centured cubic) observed in Iron and called precisely a martensitic transformation. For that reason, he considers crystals having the symmetry of a Bravais lattice, or behaving ``as if they were Bravais lattices'' and call weak those phase transitions which can be described within the Landau theory by a free energy function invariant under a finite group. Examples are discussed and it is explained why the martensitic transformation of iron is not a weak one.