Surface Roughness

If the surface has randomly distributed features, the result for the roughness parameter is strongly infl uenced by the measuring position.In many cases,profi le-based surface description is insuffi cient to provide information about functional behavior of the surface.Profi le based surface characterization allows only limited information about the cause of poor functionality and so includes limited information for quality control purposes

Surface topography and its structural details like surface roughness is traditionally inspected using tactile stylus-based profi lometers (stylus instruments)by guiding a probe tip over a workpiece surface and detecting each vertical defl ection by the surface texture.With this method, the information about the surface topography including surface details like roughness is obtained along a 2D profi le.It is questionable to which extent profi le-based information could describe surface characteristics and provide function-oriented information.