Brightness versus roughness: a multiscale approach

Abstract

A link between roughness and brightness is sought for brass specimens that were superfinished, sandblasted and brushed. Only the blasting conditions are varied in order to get different roughness and brightness. First, a relation between roughness and brightness is sought for specimens that were superfinished and sandblasted. The best relation is obtained using the mean height of the motifs, calculated using a low-pass filter and cut-off length equal to 30 μm, with a logarithmic–logarithmic model. Then, the same type of relation is determined after superfinishing sandblasting and brushing. The core material volume Vmc, computed using a high-pass filter with a cut-off length of 60 μm and a linear–logarithmic relationship, gives the best results. A relation between roughness and brightness that is common to both the pre-brushing state and post-brushing state is identified: the best roughness parameter is the arithmetic mean deviation Sa using a high-pass filter with a cut-off of 15 μm, with a logarithmic–logarithmic relationship. Finally, it is shown that the use of these filtering conditions enables us to verify the model of Beckmann and Spizzichino for the examined specimens. This scale corresponds to the end of the fractal regime and is close to the end of the signal correlation.