USE OF ATOMIC-FORCE MICROSCOPY FOR SURFACE-ROUGHNESS DETERMINATION OFBALL-BEARINGS

Since the development of microtechnology and nanotechnology, new analy tical methods have been developed, and, among them, atomic force micro scopy has been especially used for the characterization of the surface topography of a very wide range of materials on a submicrometer scale . A great advantage of this method is not only the possibility of imag ing surfaces with unprecedented resolution but it also can perform qua ntitative evaluation of selected surface features. including statistic al analysis of the corrugations, which permits the roughness parameter s to be determined. Such measurements of the surface roughness were pe rformed on small ball bearings and the results showed that the roughne ss data can be very different, even under the ''grade 3'', i.e. the lo west surface roughness value given in the AFBMA standard.