Surface Metrology Guide


Surface metrology makes it possible to control numerous functions on mechanical components and manufactured objects. Reducing wear of a moving part and increasing its lifespan, ensuring sealing between shafts and seals, decreasing fuel consumption and reducing carbon dioxyde emissions, optimizing efficiency of solar cells, obtaining luxurious aspects on brushed metal surfaces, reducing heating in electronic components, making autocleaning surfaces, etc. All these functions can be obtained by programming and controlling specific surface texture. This guide, freely proposed by Digital Surf, contains numerous resources for self-training and for adoption of good practices. The company Digital Surf has been strongly involved in surface texture analysis for more than twenty years, via François Blateyron, who has been an active member of standardization committees in France and at ISO/TC 213. This activity has allowed Digital Surf to contribute to standard development and made it possible to develop advanced features in MountainsMap® based upon early drafts of the standards and therefore offer ready-to-use tools as soon as the standard is published.


Introduction to Surface Texture

This section introduces the main concepts of surface texture and describes the recent standardization work.

Selected Bibliography

This section provides a comprehensive bibliography of scientific papers and metrology books that are useful for surface texture analysis.

Metrology Courses in Video

Series of on-line video courses about surface texture metrology. The videos are free to use. They have been initially made in French but some are available with English sub-titles.

Areal Field Parameters

This section describes Amplitude parameters (Sa, Sq, Sz, etc.) and Spatial and Hybrid parameters (Sdr, Sal, etc.) defined in ISO 25178-2.

Areal Functional Parameters

This section describes Bearing ratio, Sk and Volume parameters defined in ISO 25178, and Functional indices described in the SurfStand report.

Areal Feature Parameters

This section describes the feature parameters defined in ISO 25178 and their use for the characterization of surface motifs.

Profile Parameters

This section describes the profile parameters described in several ISO and national standards such as ISO 4287, ASME B46.1, ISO 13565, ISO 12085, VDA 2007 and others.

Leveling and Form Removal

This section describes the F operator used to level or remove the nominal form of a workpiece. This operation is usually one of the first carried on after measurement.

Filtration Techniques

This section explore the filtration operator and several filters defined in ISO 16610 as well as other innovative applications.

Metrology Q&A

This section answers to classical hot questions on some aspects of metrology. These papers have been published in Digital Surf's Surface magazine.

Metrology Standards

This section provides a list of important ISO and national standards in the field of surface texture.

Scientific Publications

This section provides a list of papers using MountainsMap or one of the custom products based on the Mountains Technology.




  Introduction to surface texture specification and verification

This video introduces the reasons why surface texture is specified and verified on engineered products, and gives the basic concepts you should know before using surface texture analysis. Duration: 10 min 58



View other surface metrology videos.