Surface roughness and fractal dimension

Surface roughness is one of the main characteristics of fabric responsible for hand feeling. By using KES, the surface height variation (SHV) trace is obtained. For characterization of roughness the mean absolute deviation (MAD; denoted by Kawabata as SMD) is usually used. The main aim of this work is quantitative description of complexity of roughness based on the SHV. The procedure of surface complexity parameters evaluation from SHV traces is described. The core is inspection of power spectral density and variogram (or autocorrelation function) behavior and classification of SHV signal to some groups. For individual groups, fractal dimension and surface roughness characteristics are computed by suitable methods. Proposed procedure was checked on the simulated SHV profiles and on practical examples.