CORRELATION-SPECTRAL ANALYSIS OF THE TOPOGRAPHY OF ENGINEERING SURFACES AT THE NANOSCALE LEVEL

Abstract

The nanotopography of some typical technical surfaces is investigated and the characteristics of the nanoroughness profile as a random process are experimentally determined – the autocorrelation function and spectral density. It is shown that for the investigated surfaces, their profilograms can be considered as realizations of a random stationary normal ergodic process. A visual check of the process normality was carried out by comparing the experimental values of the profile ordinates with theoretical values obeying the normal distribution, as well as by comparing the frequency polygon with the theoretical probability density function of the normal distribution. Quantitative confirmation of the process normality was carried out using the Kolmogorov goodness-of-fit test. It is shown that at the significance level p=0,05, the hypothesis about the normality of a random process (surface nanoroughness profile) does not contradict the experimental results. The correlation intervals of the considered processes are determined. The form of the autocorrelation functions and the values of the correlation intervals indicate the random nature of the surface profile: in the interval equal to one or two average values of the step of the irregularities of the profile, its ordinates become practically uncorrelated. Spectral density plots indicate that the surface profile can be considered as a wide-band random noise with a predominance of low-frequency components.

Keywords

• surface
• nanotopography
• profile method
• random process
• normal distribution
• autocorrelation function
• spectral density
• correlation interval