Although the response of both pure fcc metals could be expected to be very similar, our results show a fundamental difference: whereas for Cu a special invariant state with C 22 = C 23 , leading to a bifurcation from the tetragonal to an orthorhombic deformation path, is reached at a strain of 10%, for Al this state is reached only at a strain of 33% close to the critical strain defining the ideal tensile strength. The reaction of the L1 2 -type trialuminides is comparable to the response of Al, no bifurcation to an orthorhombic deformation path is predicted.The response of the D0 22 -type trialuminides is different from that of the L1 2 -type phases because of the difference in the stacking of the atomic planes along the [001]. For D0 22 -type trialuminides, the uniaxial compression along this direction or epitaxial tension in the (001) leads to the formation of a stress-free D0 3 structure, in complete analogy to the fcc⇆bcc transformations observed for the pure metals. Under uniaxial [100] loading the guiding symmetry along the deformation path is orthorhombic and leads to the formation of special structures under both tension and compression parts, which are related to the D0 3 structure in the same way as the parent D0 22 -lattice to the L1 2 structure.