Pneumatic non-contact topography characterization of finish-ground surfaces using multivariate projection methods

This paper reports on the application of multivariate analysis methods for the non-contact topography assessment of finish-ground surfaces of roughness in the range of 0.1–0.8μm Ra. The roughness information is extracted from the frequency spectrum of the back pressure signal acquired using a pneumatic gauge as the surface traverses past the nozzle. Principal components analysis is demonstrated to be effective in the unsupervised classification …