The mechanical behavior of materials under dynamic loading is important in many contexts, ranging from automobile crashes to ballistic impacts and planetary collisions. Plastic deformation and fracture are inherently multiscale processes, and extensive efforts have been made to develop theoretical and computational models to understand and predict them. These models rely on experimental observations for validation and for discovery of underlying physical mechanisms, but experimental observations of dynamic phenomena are challenging due to the short time scales involved.

In this talk, we will review the properties of synchrotron x-ray radiation that make it uniquely well-suited for studying deformation and fracture of materials, with an emphasis on in situ studies on sub-microsecond time scales. For plastic deformation we take as examples recent studies of mechanical twinning in magnesium and transformation-induced plasticity in steel, while for fracture we focus on x-ray phase contrast imaging studies of crack initiation and propagation in ceramics and geological materials. We close with a discussion of high-energy diffraction microscopy, which can provide detailed three-dimensional structural information that can be used to instantiate and validate crystal plasticity models of deformation.