Title: Surfaces generated by abrasive finishing processes as self-affine fractals

Authors: T.R. Thomas, B-G. Rosen

Addresses: Functional Surfaces Research Group, School of Business and Engineering, Halmstad University, SE-301 18 Halmstad, Sweden. ' Functional Surfaces Research Group, School of Business and Engineering, Halmstad University, SE-301 18 Halmstad, Sweden

Abstract: Self-affine fractals offer a tool for characterising surface roughness. Fractal parameters are scale-invariant and can be derived from the Structure Function (SF): if computation of the SF is not practicable then parameters can be derived from roughness parameters available on many commercial software packages. The three-dimensional SF gives information about anisotropy. SFs can offer a demonstration of the effect of wear on surface topography in tribological investigations. Finally the SF can be used with material properties to obtain a low-pass cutoff for the calculation of surface data for use in rough contact mechanics.

Keywords: self-affine fractals; topothesy; structure function; anisotropy; bifractals; corner frequency; cylinder liners; surface roughness; wear; surface topography; tribology; rough contact mechanics; abrasive finishing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSURFSE.2009.027416

International Journal of Surface Science and Engineering, 2009 Vol.3 No.4, pp.275 - 285

Published online: 22 Jul 2009 *

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