A contribution to the development of three-dimensional surface nano and micro-topography measurement and analysis techniques and systems

This work illustrates the development of techniques and systems for three-dimensional surface nano and micro-topography measurement and analysis. A system architecture is introduced that features a surface data acquisition subsystem, that can be any computer-controlled surface measurement instrument (ranging from contact stylus to non-contact optical, to AFM) and a surface data analysis subsystem, a software application that operates off-line on the acquired data, providing functionality for interactive rendering, manipulation and analysis of the data, independently of the scale and of the measurement instrument. The system implements both techniques known from the literature and developed by the authors, and can be seamlessly augmented with additional functionality to accommodate specific needs. The system functionality is demonstrated on a set of cases studies belonging to the mechanical, biomedical and textile domains