Software relocation of 3D surface topography measurements

Abstract In a number of 3D surface topography measurements it is both necessary and of great use to relocate exactly the same area, e.g., in the study of wear processes, in correlation studies of slightly overlapping characterisation techniques, and in the study of replica techniques. The objective of the present paper is to evaluate the performance of an automatic relocation process based on a simplex algorithm. The method is implemented in MATLAB™. The cross-correlation coefficient between the topographical data determines the evolution of the relocation process. Two variations of the method are used, i.e., one uses the full range of the input data and the second uses a truncated version of the input data. The truncation is based in selected percentages of the bearing area curve. Four different surfaces and two different techniques are used in this study.