[en] Relationships among Hugoniot pressure, effective viscosity, and strain rate under conditions of steady-wave shock compression are predicted based on the assumption of invariance of a shock property equal to the product of the energy dissipated in shock compression and the rise time of the steady wave. Effective viscosity is found to decrease as happrox.e/sup -1/2/, while strain rate increases as eapprox.p⁴/sub h/ with Hugoniot pressure. These results are consistent with steady-wave profile measurements on aluminum