Softening Behaviors of Severely Deformed Zn Alloy Studied by the Nanoindentation

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

dear editirs,

i have some suggestions

1. the equations should be listed on a separate line with adequate references
2. table 1 - improve format
3. control and correct the list of references according the authors guidelines, in some references are little mistakes
4. unify the SI units in wholle text

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer #1
1. Question 1: The equations should be listed on a separate line with adequate references.

     Response 1: Thanks for your suggestion. We have listed all the equations in the revised version.

2. Question 2: Table 1 - improve format

     Response 2: Thanks for your suggestion. We have improved the table in the new version.

3. Question 3: Control and correct the list of references according the authors guidelines, in some references are little mistakes. Unify the SI units in wholle text

     Response 3: Thanks for your suggestion. We have correct the format of the references. All the unit are the SI in the our research filed.

Reviewer 2 Report

This work may is interesting however there a numerous things to be clarified

1. English quite poor which make difficult to understand the message of this research

2. It is not clear why was used “Zamark 3 alloy” for research consideration

3. Is there any potential application for this material ?

4. The state of art is very brief it should be improved

5. Is there any standard or how was selected the procedure for removing the residual stress? cause there is stated : “annealed at temperature of 40oC for 7 days » however I am not sure if is the right route !

6. There is presented TEM analysis however the sample preparation process is incomplete

7. How many repetition was performed for nanoidentention ?

8. Please revise Fig 1 as the words overpass the regions and mislead the readers

9. The order of Figure is wrong after Fig it is Figure 7 ?

10. In Figure 6 some caption start from 0 other have to of 0 on the horizontal axes , better to annotate the caption a), b), c)

11. The conclusions should be refined as per results

Author Response

Responses to Reviewer #2

1. Question 1: This work may is interesting however there a numerous things to be clarified.

English quite poor which make difficult to understand the message of this research

     Response 1: Thanks for your suggestion. We have improved the English in order to enhance the understanding the meaning of this work.

2. Question 2: It is not clear why was used “Zamark 3 alloy” for research consideration

Is there any potential application for this material ?

     Response 2: Thanks for your suggestion. In fact, we planned to process the pure Al and study the its mechanical properties after refining grain size. But materials supplier provided the Zamark 3 alloy that our researcher do not know. Therefore, this research is a coincidence.

Conventionally, refining the grain size of the metallic materials could enhance the mechanical properties such as strength and hardness. This softening phenomenon is very rare and is easy to occur in the superplastic materials. We are focused on explaining the reasons of the softening phenomenon and do not consider its application of this material.

3. Question 3: The state of art is very brief it should be improved

    Response 3: Thanks for your suggestion. Up to date, the softening research are focused on the Zn alloy and Al alloy and we provided the literatures which are the representative achievement.

4. Question 4: Is there any standard or how was selected the procedure for removing the residual stress? cause there is stated : “annealed at temperature of 40oC for 7 days » however I am not sure if is the right route !

     Response 4: Thanks for your suggestion. Considering the low absolute melting temperature of Zn alloy, we should choose the low temperature heat treatment to maximize the elimination of the internal stress. Our testing demonstrates that the hardness value of the regions in the matrix after HPT is close to the value of undeformed matrix. Therefore, it can be believed that this method is useful.

5. Question 5:

1. There is presented TEM analysis however the sample preparation process is incomplete
2. How many repetition was performed for nanoidentention ?
3. Please revise Fig 1 as the words overpass the regions and mislead the readers
4. The order of Figure is wrong after Fig it is Figure 7 ?
5. In Figure 6 some caption start from 0 other have to of 0 on the horizontal axes , better to annotate the caption a), b), c)
6. The conclusions should be refined as per results

     Response 5:

1. Thanks for your suggestion. The detailed of the TEM samples preparation procedures are very detailed in the ref. [16].
2. A minimum of 10 indentation tests were repeated in each condition. If the testing curves are good reproducibility, we do no need to continue the experiment. If not, the number of tests needs to be increased.
3. We have improved the Fig.1 and this graph is actually high-quality OM figures and the grain structure is extremely clear.
4. We are quite sure that the order is correct.
5. This is not a good advice. We still insist our previous Figures. If we change the horizontal axes to 0 in the figures of b,d and f, some information of the curves are covered.
6. See the revised version.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Thank to authors to improve partially the work as per reviewer comments. However there are still numerous problems.

1. The english was not imporved. An example :"by sliding friction treatment (SFT) was to investigate the influence"..

2. The author claim that all Figures are in order but there is missing Figure 2. 

3. Please make a carefully revision before further consideration 

Author Response

Our authors really hope to receive professional opinions which are beneficial for improving the article level, not just “English needed to be improved”. Certainly, we have given the English appropriate modification. Besides that, we quite sure that our uploading files do not exist the issue of missing pictures. It is very strange that there are many image missing and misarrangement in the Coating format word. We have no idea that whether the submission system need to be improved. Finally, we rearrange all the Figures in the Coating format word.

Round 3

Reviewer 2 Report

1. The author improved little bit this work by correctly inserting the Figures. However, the paper english and very poor.

2. Just and example "While in the twinning deformed layer, the highly frequent dislocation-twinning boundary (TB) interactions are
responsible for subsequent inverse Cottrell-Stokes at lower stress, which is quite different from dislocation-dislocation reaction inside the grain in their coarse-grained (CG) counterpart.

3. In that respect I highly recomend a professional english verification of language! 

Author Response

We have upload the new version of this work. We have checked all the text in the manuscript and do not consider our English form have huge problems. If the editor insists the view that our work exists many poor English statement, we decide to withdraw this manuscript.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf