Assessment of the state of the geometrical surface texture of seal rings by various measuring methods

The present paper concerns the metrological measurements of the geometric structure of the faces of seal rings made of silicon carbide and carbon-graphite. Three different instruments, i.e. the stylus profilometer, the optical profilometer, and the atomic force microscope, were used to measure the geometric structure of surfaces. In the comparative analysis, an identical area of the ring surface which was mapped by three measuring instruments with different sampling densities resulting from their metrological characteristics was assumed. The measurements made show that for the silicon carbide ring, the surface texture measurements on an atomic force microscope and optical instruments more accurately represent the actual topography than the measurement determined by the stylus profilometer.