Wear 271 (2011) 494–508 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Wear journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/wear Recent trends in surface metrology T.G. Mathia a,∗ , P. Pawlus b , M. Wieczorowski c a Laboratoire de Tribologie et Dynamique des Systèmes CNRS-UMR 5513, Ecole Centrale de Lyon, 36 Av Guy de Collongue, Ecully, France b Rzeszow University of Technology, Poland c Poznan University of Technology, Poland article info Article history: Received 23 April 2010 Received in revised form 31 May 2010 Accepted 2 June 2010 Available online 11 June 2010 Keywords: Surface topography Measurement Analysis Applications abstract This paper describes future trends in surface metrology. Measurement techniques are briefly mentioned. A special attention was paid to tactile and optical methods. Selected problems of surface topography characterization are described. The effects of sampling and filtering on surface topography representation are analysed. Structured surfaces are becoming both technologically and economically critical. Therefore their description is a problem of a great practical importance. Multi-process textures are very important from functional point of view. Various methods of their description are compared. Surface texturing as a means for enhancing tribological properties of frictional pairs started to be extremely popular from for about last 10 years. The effects of surface texturing on improving tribological properties of sliding assemblies are analysed. The other influences of surface topography are mentioned in this paper. © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The last half century of geometrical aspects of surfaces metrol- ogy was extremely rich in events related to equipments design as well as data treatments dealing with parameters and standard- ized rules. Therefore it is difficult, pretentious and also dangerous to tempt the reliable prediction a fortiori to be counterpart of the 12th International Conference on Metrology and Properties of Engineering Surfaces. Specific contributions of British, German, United States of America, Russian, French and Polish schools caused considerable progress of techniques of measurement, methods of characterization with development of European Union and Inter- national standards. Standardization processes will be probably increased in terms of methods of measurements and data treatments for specific appli- cations due to the externalization, diversification of products and under contractor’s strategies. Particular attention is paid to cre- ative process of new sensors for explicit applications in terms of better or less known transfer functions due to materials natures and range of topographical features. The scanning systems of dif- ferent device designs and assemblies will be analyzed in context of precision and reliability taking into account especially the contri- butions of tribology. The new applications of surface metrology in traceability of surfaces, bionics, criminology and medicine will be analyzed. ∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 478433383. E-mail address: Thomas.Mathia@ec-lyon.fr (T.G. Mathia). 2. Metrology 2.1. Measurement techniques Despite a great development of optical and other techniques a tactile profilometer is still the most common roughness measuring device in mechanical industry. Yet, since Abbott and Firestone’s [1] construction from 1933 it has gone a long way. First of all mod- ern software allows computing of approximately 300 parameters of roughness profile and dozens of topography parameters. Rough- ness can be measured on 200 mm length and 100 mm width with the deviation of guide equal to the fraction of micrometers, and fur- ther software support of accuracy can be applied. In this case the slide is measured by a laser interferometer and its errors are col- lected in the microprocessor’s system and used for the correction of indication. Besides the measuring instruments often offer simulta- neously measurement of roughness and outline with greater range – even above 2 mm with 0.6 nm resolution. The interesting element of this device is a probe – magneticically fixed, which prevents damage (break), because during any impact or overload of the part, the diamond needle is separated from the body on a three points magnetic holder. Additionally the probe is equipped with an AM transmitter and a receiver, which are used for communication with a central pro- cessing unit, and a simple memory chip. All of these assemblies of construction are together called an intelligent probe. In the mem- ory the parameters of the probe are stored and sent to the controller after connecting to the holder. The memory contains also the data which are used to protect the probe during so called soft lowering. It limits the speed of the free falling of the measurement arm. Thanks 0043-1648/$ – see front matter © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.wear.2010.06.001