A new approach to analysis of surface topography

It is well known that an engineering surface is composed of a large number of wavelengths of roughness that are superimposed on each other. This paper proposes a new method for surface topography analysis based on empirical mode decomposition. The method provides good adaptive separation of surface profile into multiple bands. Applications are conducted by using a milled engineering surfaces to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the empirical mode decomposition method in the analysis of engineering surfaces.