Software measurement standards for areal surface texture parameters: part 2—comparison of software

A companion paper in this issue describes reference software for the evaluation of areal surface texture parameters, focusing on the definitions of the parameters and giving details of the numerical algorithms employed in the software to implement those definitions. The reference software is used as a benchmark against which software in a measuring instrument can be compared. A data set is used as input to both the software under test and the reference software, and the results delivered by the software under test are compared with those provided by the reference software. This paper presents a comparison of the results returned by the reference software with those reported by proprietary software for surface texture measurement. Differences between the results can be used to identify where algorithms and software for evaluating the parameters differ. They might also be helpful in identifying where parameters are not sufficiently well-defined in standards. (paper)