RANDOM PROCESS ANALYSIS:

We investigate 3 aspects of surfaces : The height information, the spacing and the
areal information. The parameters have no role in characterising the position of
height information, their major role lies in analysing shape and size of the height
information.

Any height based parameter, whether it is a peak or average value will suffice.
Although the choice of parameter can be arbitrary, Ra is the most popular choice.
These types of parameters give us a reasonably stable estimate of surface height.

Shape characterisation is a little difficult, it can be quite tedious accounting for every
shape in the profile. Because we need to keep the number of parameters to a
minimum, 2 parameters are carefully selected to selectively characterise shape –
skewness and kurtosis. Skewness shows how the shape of the profile changes with
height, while the kurtosis shows how pointy the peaks are.

The two functions used to characterise the horizontal spacing information rather than
the height information are the autocorrelation function and the power spectral density.
They carry the same information and hence, either can be used.

The Autocorrelation Function:

It is a measure of the similarity of one part of the profile with another a distance from
it. It can also be defined as the average value of the product of the profile and itself
shifted by the distance (x).
To get the function, the value of the shift is changed from 0 to whatever shift
might be considered to be the upper limit.

This is effective because it provides an enhancement of the signal (profile data) from
the noise that may have been introduced in the system. Since each point on the
autocorrelation function taken from the surface is a result of a great deal of averaging.
The ACR function is best suited to reveal changes in processes whereas PSA is useful
for processes that are fundamentally repetitive or periodic.