The Development of a Flexible Characterisation System for Surface Metrology

Surface texture and its measurement are becoming more and more increasingly important in the field of high precision engineering and nano-technology. It is a significant and efficient way to predict the functional performance of an engineering product by characterising its surface. As the extraction and evaluation of surfaces features not only relies on analysis algorithms but also measurement techniques, most of surface characterisation software systems are embedded in the measurement instruments. At present, even though a series of Geometrical Product Specification (GPS) standards are released to guide the procedure of surface characterisation, there are no software systems
give a fully support of them. As a consequence, evaluation results from different systems are incomparable, even worse, conflict with each other.

Surface characterisation system needs to be updated constantly with the emergence of new algorithms and methods. However, the lack of good extensibility, reusability and maintainability is a serious obstacle to the innovation of existing surface characterisation systems. As functional modules in current surface characterisation systems are tightly coupled together, it is not conducive to the reuse of function modules and innovation of overall system. A lot of redundant and duplicate works have been raised in either
enhancing present characterisation systems or building a new characterisation system.

To improve the reusability of function modules and facilitate system extension, this research aims to establish a flexible surface characterisation system with an open architecture. By employing component based development technologies, the overall characterisation system is constructed by gluing various functional components together instead of being created from scratch. Each analysis algorithm or method is implemented as an independent functional component, which is separated from the system framework. And also it can be easily reused by other characterisation systems as an executable chunk. Any system functional components can be developed or maintained independently by different organisation as long as they comply with predefined protocols (interfaces).

This thesis proposed a novel surface characterisation system, which can be reconfigured as end users‘ expectation at any time even when it has been installed and deployed
already. Functional components can be added, removed or replaced dynamically without affecting other parts of the system. Furthermore, the system is flexible such that researchers and developers can concentrate on characterisation algorithms and methods themselves, and then develop their own functional components which can be easily added to this system.