3D Morphological Analysis and Synthesis of Industrial Materials Surfaces

Abstract

We present the original results pertaining to understandingtopographical features on real industrial alloy surfaces. Quite often, suchmaterials are subjected to different thermomechanical treatments with the goal ofimproving their yield strength, ductility, corrosion resistance, and otherproperties. Operations of casting, rolling, extruding, and stretching metalinvariably leave their distinct “signatures” on the processedmaterials’ surfaces. It is highly desirable to be able to perform theircharacterization not in terms of the numerous surface roughness and/or wavinessparameters, but rather in terms of the distinctive contributions of such operations.Indeed, if such a quantitative characterization were possible, it would be mucheasier to introduce corrective actions into the appropriate chain of productionoperations. We provide such possibility with the “morphological analysis andsynthesis” techniques described in the paper. The results can be quantifiedeither using surface topography measurements or studying light scattering from suchsurfaces. This last capability also gives a quick check of the “morphologicalsimilarity” of the “real” and modeled surfaces (images), whichis important, e.g., in phase-field simulations. All calculations were performedusing the MorphoHawk© software developed by the author and colleagues.