2004 Volume 45 Issue 2 Pages 469-478
The surface structures of four materials (a pure aluminum sheet, an aluminum alloy sash, a thickness gauge and a magnetic tape) are observed on the nanometer scale by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and analyzed by one-dimensional fractal analyses. It is confirmed for all the surfaces that they have a self-affined fractal property under a resolution of 1 nm. The two-dimensional fast Fourier transformation (2D-FFT) analysis is also applied to these surfaces and their characteristics are clarified. The power spectrum model for surface simulation is proposed and its validity is confirmed by experimental results. A method for simulating the surface structure of any materials is presented, and its validity is shown on some materials whether in-plane isotropic or anisotropic. A computer-aided engineering (CAE) system composed of 2D-FFT and inverse FFT (IFFT) for quantitative estimation of surface nanostructures is advanced and applied to various surface problems. It enables the mass data of a material surface to compress into only three parameters. This compressed information includes all surface waviness, complexity, irregularity, roughness and in-plane anisotropic properties.
