Fundamentals of Surface Metrology
This course emphasized research applications of advanced surface metrology, including the measurement and analysis of surface roughness. Surface metrology can be important in a wide variety of situations including adhesion, friction, catalysis, heat transfer, mass transfer, scattering, biological growth, wear, and wetting. These situations impact practically all the engineering disciplines and sciences. This course considered the basic principles and conventional analyses, and methods. Measurement and analysis methods were critically reviewed for utility. Advanced methods for differentiating surface textures suspected of being different because of their performance or manufacture were discussed. Methods for making correlations between surface textures and behavioral and manufacturing parameters were also discussed. The results of applying these methods can be used to support the design and manufacture of surface textures, and to address issues in quality assurance. Examples of research from a broad range of applications are presented, including food science, pavements, friction, adhesion, machining, and grinding.
This research proposal aims to improve material selection for FDM additive manufacturing by correlating surface topography with performance parameters through experimentation, as well as answer the following questions.
What is the impact of FDM 3D printing parameters (material type/layer height/wall thickness) on both the conventional and newer characterization parameters used as well as curvature tensor values to characterize the surface topography of FDM 3D printed parts?
How does the topography of FDM 3D printed surfaces change at varying scales of the same region (through multiscale analyses) and is there a large variability in the conventional and newer characterization parameters, along with the curvature from location to location on the FDM 3D printed surfaces?
How do the values of conventional and newer characterization parameters vary across surface topographies on FDM 3D printed surfaces, and does curvature values experience this same trend?
Do the surface topographies of FDM 3D printed parts correlate at multiple scales with the fatigue properties of these parts?
Do the surface topographies of FDM 3D printed parts correlate at multiple scales with the resulting water absorption and hygroscopicity of these parts?