Wear 257 (2004) 12501256

Characterisation of the 3D waviness and roughness motifs

S. Mezghania,b , H. Zahouania,b,
a

Laboratoire de Tribology et Dynamique des Syst`emes, UMR CNRS 5513, Institut Europeen de Tribologie,
Ecole Centrale de Lyon, 36 Avenue Guy de Collongue, 69131 Ecully cedex, France
b Ecole Nationale dIng
enieurs de St Etienne, 58 rue Jean Parot, 42000 St Etienne, France
Received 15 January 2004; received in revised form 3 March 2004; accepted 28 May 2004

Abstract
The surface summits and their waviness envelope constitute the boundary surface of contact area during the tribological life of solids.
The form, scale and orientation of the three-dimensional motifs play an important role on flatness behaviour of engineered surfaces, contact
mechanics, adherence, friction, lubrication and leakage problems. The basic idea of this work considers that the three-dimensional motifs
of the surface are a key elements of surface topography in regard to different field of tribology. The 2D motif is defined as the part of
profile which associates tow peaks separated a deep valley (pit). The extension of the 2D motif definition to the 3D morphology needs the
simultaneous assessment of waviness and roughness. The approach developed in this work is based on a geomorphologic definition of 3D
motif. The approach is improved by a new algorithm of waviness envelope construction and a morphologic filter using the waviness envelope
as a low-frequency surface of filtering.
2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Waviness; Lubrication; 2D motifs

1. Introduction
In tribological point of view, the fluid flow phenomena
between contacting rough surfaces are interesting for the lubrication mechanisms and sealing problems. For example,
the metal to metal sealing parts are sometimes used as separable fluid connectors. It is well known that the surface morphology of contacting parts governs the pressure distribution
and the leakage across the metal seals essentially the local
morphology plays an important role on contact mechanics
and the leakage rate. Different recent works have shown the
importance of the surface waviness related to the summits
envelope in friction and adherence, the pressure supported
by the summits during an elastic contact and the size of the
motifs in the mixed or hydrodynamic lubrication.
This paper concerns the development of two approaches
of surface morphology assessment in regard to the tribolog

Corresponding author. Tel.: +33 72186000; fax: +33 78433383.

E-mail address: hassan.zahouani@ec-lyon.fr (H. Zahouani).

0043-1648/$ see front matter 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.wear.2004.05.024

ical performances. The method consists in a morphological decomposition of the surface topography as a local 2D
or 3D motifs [14]. The first method defines the motifs as
a combination of the summits and pits for a mono- and
multi-directional morphology. Three parameters are necessary to define an oriented motifs: , , . The depth computed as the difference between the summits and pits, the
width defined as the Cartesian distance between the summits and the orientation of the motif. The 3D morphological tree can be represented by the density of the motifs oriented in each direction at different scales and
wavelength . This multi-scale representation is very useful in tribology. The fluid reservoir can be characterised by
the multi-scale aspect of the motifs size and their orientation.
The second approach developed is based on a geomorphologic definition of 3D motif. A 3D motif is considered
as a catchment basin surrounded by watershed lines. A new
algorithm of waviness envelope construction has been developed.

S. Mezghani, H. Zahouani / Wear 257 (2004) 12501256

2. Motifs topology of engineered surfaces

It is well known that the contact between rough surfaces
occurs at asperities and results in high pressure in the contacting asperities and small real contact area which is only a
fraction of the nominal contact area. Relations between the
real contact area and the load, and between separation and
load, are two basic characteristics necessary for understanding many tribological situations such as friction, adhesion,
wear, thermal and electrical conductance, and sealing. The
fluid flow phenomena between the contacting rough surfaces
are interesting for the lubrication mechanisms and the sealing problem. More recent investigations in wear experiments
show that the asperities can be described as a continuous area
with heights exceeding the estimated film thickness. The lifetime of lubricated system can be estimated relatively to the
number of the summits penetrating the lubricant film. In another way, the permanent lubrication is conditioned with the
capacity of the surface to retain a necessary quantity of lubricant in the valley of the surface. The fluid flow phenomena
can be influenced by the directional properties of the local
motif and the multi-scale aspect of the morphology.
The basic idea of this approach considers the motifs of the
surface as a key element in a tribological system. The summits
and their wave envelope constitute the boundary surface of
contact area friction and wear, the form, scale and orientation
of the motifs play an important role in lubrication and leakage
problem. Two approaches are presented in this work: the first
one is the extension of the 2D motif definition to the monoor multi-directional motifs. The second approach considers
a 3D motif as a closed contour.
2.1. 2D-oriented motifs identication: mono- and
multi-directional motifs
In this morphology, we can define a surface motif as the
association of two summits separated with a pit. The tip topological definition is showed in Table 1.
The conceptual method created to characterise the surface
morphology is based on the geographical approach devel-

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oped initially by Peucker and Douglass in 1975 [5], in order

to classify the geomorphologic features of the earth relief as
a family of summits, crests, passes, valleys, ridges, slopes
etc. This approach has been adjusted and applied to real engineering surfaces [1,2,68]. The geomorphologic analysis
supposes that every point on a surface can be identified and
classified by analysis of its neighbours. Let us consider a point
, whose elevation with reference to a mean plane is Z . This
elevation can be subtracted from those of its neighbours in
either a clockwise or counterclockwise sequence around
(Table 1). The result is an array of positive or negative numbers (differences Zij Z = + or  ) allowing the characteristic features to be recognised. The following quantities
are usually introduced: n is the number of neighbouring
points, i the height difference between and one of its
neighbours (i = 1, n), + the sum of all positive differences,
 the sum of all negative differences, N the number of
sign changes and L the number of points between two sign
changes. The summit topological identification is showed in
Table 1.
Three parameters , , are necessary to define a
three-dimensional linear motif: the depth computed as
the maximum difference between the summit and the pit,
ij = sup(Zsummit ) Zpit , the width defined as the Cartesian
distance of the direction of the motif which coincides with
the general direction of a principal manufacturing scratch or
valley, is made perpendicular between the two summits and
the direction of the motif . Fig. 1 shows the motifs detection
of cylinder liner morphology.
2.2. 3D motifs dened as a local closed contour
This 3D motif method is based on an algorithm of watershed determination developed initially by Vincent [9], for
image analysis and adapted to the surface topography by Barret [10]. The 3D motif is considered as a catchment basin
surrounded by watershed lines. A new algorithm of waviness
envelope construction has been developed.
The watershed lines, as a tool for segmentation, is more
efficient to determine the surface elementary motifs. In this

Table 1
Algorithm approach of summit s and pit identification

Summit

+ = 0,  > tS , N = 0

Pit

+ > tp ,  = 0, N = 0

tS is the thresholds for summits: 2% tS 10% of total roughness (SPt ).

Dij+ = Zc Zij > 0, Dij

Zij

= Zc Zij < 0,

neighbouring, + = Dij+ , = Dij

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Fig. 1. Detection of 2D-oriented motifs.

approach, the watershed lines are obtained by the immersion

of surface relief in water (Fig. 2). The water progressively fills
up the different catchment basins, starting from the minima
of lowest altitude. Then, at each pixel where water coming
from at least two different minima would merge, a dam is
built. At the end of this immersion process, each minimum is
completely surrounded by dams, which delimit the associated

catchment basin. The whole set of dams obtained corresponds

to watersheds lines of the surface and consequently to the
local maximums.
The algorithm proceeds in two stages. The first stage of
the algorithm consists of determination of the elementary
motifs for the surface; in the second stage an association
between these elementary motifs is effected. Its main ad-

Fig. 2. 3D motif detection.

S. Mezghani, H. Zahouani / Wear 257 (2004) 12501256

Fig. 3. Various stages of motifs association.

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S. Mezghani, H. Zahouani / Wear 257 (2004) 12501256

Fig. 4. Detection algorithm of the local normal vector.

Fig. 5. Motifs parameters.

vantage is that it is faster than any other known algorithm.

But using this algorithm for 3D motif determination implies a strong limitation on the combination scheme used
to obtain significant motifs from elementary ones. In fact,
any local approach of motif combinations, involving direct
association between motif pairs, would not be consistent
with our motif definition. It means that new motifs produced in this way would not correspond to an immersion
process. Thus, we adopt a completely different approach of
this problem. Associations are made indirectly in two-stage
process: first, we fill up non-significant motifs, in a sense
specified later, and second we determine watershed lines for

the modified surface to obtain a new set of enlarged motifs.

Let us call Ai the surface of a motif at the level of its
overflowing point, which is the lowest point of the watershed
line surrounding this motif. A significant motif is then defined
as a motif with a surface Ai greater than a threshold surface .
To obtain all the significant motifs corresponding to a given
value of , the process described above has to be repeated
until the surfaces Ai of all remaining motifs become greater
than .
In addition, we decided to perform a multi-scale analysis,
i.e. a method able to display all the relevant observation levels

Fig. 6. 3D waviness of the motifs.

S. Mezghani, H. Zahouani / Wear 257 (2004) 12501256

of the surface, from roughness to waviness. For this purpose,

we reason about the multi-scale curve representing the evolution of the number of motifs versus the threshold surface
, which is our multi-scale criterion. Then, a flat zone in this
curve corresponds to a relevant analysis scale of the surface.
The global algorithm of the method is given below:
Begin
Watershed determination and computation of
Amin = Mini Ai for the motifs mi M.
For  = min to max with step Do:
(a) While Amin  Do
- filling up of the motifs mi M with Ai ,
- watershed determination and computation of
Amin = Mini Ai for the motifs mi M.
(b) Treatment of the set of (significant) motifs obtained:
determination of statistical parameters, addition of the
point (, total number of motifs) to the multi-scale
curve, etc.
A multi-scale analysis with the 3D motif method was performed for random texture (sand-blasted surface) and oriented surface (turned surface) with a geometric increasing of
threshold surface . Fig. 3 shows two examples of motifs
detection: sand-blasted surface and human skin topography.
During the multi-scale analysis, apart from the number of
motifs, we also determine the mean surface for each set of
significant motifs obtained.
The detection of the local normal vector to the area of the
motif is described in Fig. 4. This parameter is very useful to
the characterisation of the flatness and light reflection.
The computed parameters of roughness motifs include the
depth, area and local normal vector of the motif are presented
in Fig. 5.

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Franke (4) by the following expression:

F (x, y) = b(0) + b(1)x + b(2)y
+Sum(a(i)C(X(i), x, Y (i), y))
The extracted envelope surface is of high visual quality and
can be efficiently evaluated for rendering and for subsequent
treatment needed. Moreover, this waviness envelope formed
by the interpolated data can be subtracted from the initial
image to determine roughness components (Fig. 6).
The computed waviness parameters include the depth,
wavelengths and the normal vector distribution.

4. Conclusion
It is well known that an engineering surface is composed
of a large number of length scales of roughness that are superimposed on each other. The multi-scale roughness features
are related to different aspects of the processes the surface
has undergone, and influence the functional performance of
the workpiece. The motif approach developed in this work is
adapted to the functional properties of manufactured surface,
so for some field in tribology such as friction, adherence,
adhesion, wettability, lubrication, liquid flow., etc., it is very
important to know the contribution of each scale of roughness component to the macroscopic functionality. With this
vision, we can take further steps in the multi-scale aspect of
the morphological anisotropy, which was up to now limited
to a surface texture analysis as opposed to a volume one,
thus opening up a new field for dealing with problems related to friction, lubrication, static or dynamic fluid leakage,
using new surface parameters showing real incidence reality
of surface topography in different field of surface science.

3. Construction of the 3D surface waviness envelope

Either a dense or scattered data set obtained from a method
of segmentation is initially considered. We find to construct
a smooth surface since such surfaces look more pleasant and
have nice properties for further processing and rendering.
Minimum curvature is one of the most popular methods
involves the mapping of those points onto a discrete rectangular grid. The reconstruction consists in calculating the
value of each grid node so that the final mesh represents a
surface that interpolates the given constraints with some type
of continuity. A minimum curvature spline surface is fitted
to the data points described by X, Y and Z. The basis Greens
function is given as
C(x0 , x1 , y0 , y1 ) = d 2 log(d)
This approach is based on the inversion of the Greens
function, where d is the distance between (x0 , y0 ), (x1 , y1 ).
For N data points, a system of N + 3 simultaneous equations
are solved for the coefficients of the surface. For any interpolation point, the interpolated value is used as described by

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