My head is starting to hurt. The only pressure reading a shooter is interested in at a given location (and he doesn't really care about how long it took to get there) is the highest reading at that location. Therefore, once you've talked about the highest reading in the entire barrel--which is what we get from reloading manuals when they give a pressure of a specific load--you don't need to use any adjective, PERIOD.
One more time, here's my example, simple and straightforward: "Load X developed its peak pressure of 8,323 psi at 1.3" from the breech. At 3", the pressure reading had dropped to 6,724 psi; at 6", to 5,438 psi; at 12", to 4,392 psi . . . " etc. Why complicate things by talking about a maximum at any location other than the overall peak pressure, when the only figure anyone is interested in (except perhaps engineers) is the highest pressure at a given location? Hell, why not throw in the fact that there's no pressure at all before the gun is fired--which means that any increase at all could be called a peak? Even though that "peak" in fact represents a DECREASE in pressure from the previous "peak", back closer to the breech? If all I know is the information I presented in my example above, then I can make myself a little graph (if I chose to do so), or the individual presenting the information can make the graph--as Bell did in his article, and as Dupont did in their tests--and compare the "rate of decay" in pressure between specific loads. What more do I need to know, and why would I need to know it? If my concern is protecting my old and thin-walled barrels from excess pressure, that information will allow me to choose between loads with various peak pressures, as well as between loads with similar peak pressures but different rates of decay. If I'm worried about a pressure of 6700 psi at 6" from the breech, produced by a load with a peak pressure of 8500 psi, then I can look for another load with a similar (or lower) peak pressure which also has a lower pressure at 6". Anything else is irrelevant, and anything else using "peak", "location peak", or "location maximum" is potentially confusing--because I, as a shooter, have no interest whatsoever in any pressure readings at a given location other than the highest pressure reading at that given location.
