Morphological Filters Based on Motif Combination for Functional Surface Evaluation

Regarded as the complement of commonly used mean-line based filters, morphological filters are more function oriented. They are relevant to geometrical properties of surfaces and offers better results for functional prediction of surfaces. The paper first gives a brief introduction to morphological filters and morphological operations. An algorithm to implement morphological filters is presented, which is based on the motif combination. Experimental data are presented to illustrate the algorithm’s superiority in performance. The end effect of morphological filters is corrected by the reflective padding. Either circular or horizontal structuring elements are available using this method. Two examples of applying the morphological closing filter with the disk and the line-segment structuring element on a milled surface profile are illustrated. Finally, the morphological alternating sequential filter is employed to evaluate the roughness of functional stratified surfaces as a replacement to two stage Gaussian filter.