A recently developed model for simulating the dynamic behavior of silicate materials is applied to the loading and unloading properties of granite. Four time‐resolved wave profile measurements on granite are presented and used to supplement Hugoniot data to constrain the model. This model is based on a dynamic process‐dependent description of phase mixing. In the solid–solid mixed‐phase region, the loading states are determined from a simple two‐parameter constraint equation which relates the mass fraction of the high pressure phase &lgr; to the Gibbs free‐energy difference between the phases &Dgr;G. On release, the reverse phase transition is modeled as a two‐stage transition with each stage described by a two‐parameter equation with the same form as the loading equation. In all four of the simulations, the loading behavior of the shock‐wave experiment is well represented. For three of the experiments the release behavior is accurately simulated up to the point at which the measured interface speed reaches its first minimum. For the remaining experiment the simulation matches only the earliest release behavior and then rapidly deviates from the measured data.