Response to “Shear Impossibility—Comments on ‘Void Growth by Dislocation Emission’ and ‘Void Growth in Metals’”

Abstract

We thank the authors of Ref. [1] for their comments and interest in our work [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. We agree that the emission of shear loops on one single shear plane cannot lead to void growth. However, our simulations suggest that coordinated shear on non-parallel planes can lead to void growth/shrinkage [3], [4] and [5]. Detailed descriptions of this process are still being worked out and represent an exciting area for future research. Thus, there seem to be two separate dislocation mechanisms operating either sequentially or simultaneously: shear and prismatic loop emission. Whereas prismatic loops are well known and have been extensively documented, the postulation of “special” shear loops is novel. The authors [1] have correctly pointed out that special restrictions need to be applied to these shear loops, something not mentioned in Refs. [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6].