This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will test the technical, scientific and commercial feasibility of the next generation of scale-sensitive, fractal-based tiling and packing algorithms. These algorithms will be used to develop software that can be used to improve the characterization of topographic data acquired from engineering surfaces. It is well known that the topography or roughness of a surface influences its performance or behavior, and is influenced by the manufacturing or creation processes, although quantification of these relationships depends on advancing surface metrology. The improved characterization will promote better functional correlations between the topography of a surface, its performance and its manufacture, which will support concurrent engineering design of surfaces topography. These algorithms will be applied to topographic data acquired by several kinds of instruments which have been recently developed: atomic probe microscopes, interferometric microscopes, confocal microscopes, scanning laser microscopes and stereo reconstruction of digital images, as well as conventional profiling devices. The market for these kinds of devices is several hundred per year and growing at 10-20% per year. Currently several software packages are in use for less sophisticated scale-sensitive fractal analyses which have sold to industry for about $ 10,000 apiece. This award is supported by the Small Business Innovation Research Program and the Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR).
