On Three-dimensional Surface Topography Analysis Process Planning and Documenting for Engineering Applications

Three-dimensional surface topography analysis is currently supported by a large amount of methods, techniques and tools. However, an incomplete understanding of the applicability, usefulness and performance of many of the available techniques in different application domains, and the lack of a structured approach for combining such techniques into effective analysis processes make three-dimensional surface topography analysis a complex task, requiring significant expertise and a certain amount of trial-and-error to be successfully accomplished. This work concerns three-dimensional surface topography analysis process engineering. A formal representation is introduced to model data and operations involved in the analysis process. Based on this representation, a software application has been developed that provides a framework for analysis process planning. Within the application, operators can develop parametric analysis process plans embedding their expert knowledge in a structured, editable, documented and reproducible form. The software application supports also automated execution of generated analysis process plans and automated report generation for documenting the analysis results. Partial support to the automation of analysis process planning is also provided, in particular in identifying target data to be pursued by the analysis process, and in generating consistent sequences of analysis operations, within the analysis process plan, that lead to such target data.