Abstract In order to investigate the frictional behaviour and the change in surface roughness of different sheet topographies, a bending under tension friction test, BUT, was used. This test exposes the material to bulk-plastic deformation under conditions similar to those present in the drawing radius of a real tool. Each steel sheet material has been tested under different lubrication conditions. To measure the sheet surface topography a 3D stylus technique was used. For each steel strip the original surface, the area in contact with the tool and the resulting surface topography were measured. When comparing “standard” 3D surface roughness data for original and final surfaces, no correlation with friction data was obtained. However, with a special evaluation technique good correlation with oil retention volume and frictional behaviour was found for the surface in contact with the tool. By using measurements from the contact area, filtering the measured surface in two steps, firstly with a 5th degree polynom to get rid of the circular form and secondly with a ball filter to get rid of the waviness located in the topmost layer in the surface and then plotting the bearing area curve for the filtered surface on a probability paper, the real area of contact for each steel sheet surface can be determined, as well as the number of oil pockets and their mean area. The oil pockets were estimated by using a software in which areas of peaks were estimated, on a surface inverted at the level of the real area of contact. By plotting the mean area of the oil pockets versus the coefficient of friction for a sheet material with an excess amount of lubricant, a relationship is determined.