Quantitative characterization of the surface topography of cold rolled sheets — new approaches and possibilities

When processing cold rolled metal sheet with modified surfaces textures, the conventional roughness parameters are not sufficient to characterize aspects such as rolling mill wear phenomena, as well as sheet metal and lacquered surface, regarding their formability and/or gloss degree. Furthermore, metal sheet forming processes are increasingly focused on tribological parameters; where the sheet metal surface topography becomes a characteristic that shows great potential for process optimization. This work presents 3D surface characterization methods, searching on the basis of this characterization a correlation between the surface topography and the tribological behavior as well as the formability of Al 6016-T4 sheets.