Optics and Lasers in Engineering 30 (1998) 433440

Roughness measurement of metallic surfaces

based on the laser speckle contrast method
Lisa C. Leonard*, Vincent Toal
Laboratory for Holographic Applications, Dublin Institute of Technology, Kevin street, Dublin 8, Ireland
Received 16 April 1998; accepted 23 July 1998

Abstract
A method of measuring surface roughness of flat lapped, ground and polished metallic
surfaces, by the far-field speckle contrast method is presented in this paper. The laser speckle
contrast technique depends on the existence of an approximately linear relationship between
the speckle contrast and the roughness of the illuminated surface. Initially it was shown that the
linear relationship existed up to 0.1 lm Ra (centre-line average) roughness using HeliumNeon
light, after which a saturation effect was observed. The effect of varying the incident angle of
illumination was investigated with a view to extending the measurement range. The use of high
incident angles of illumination has been found to increase the surface roughness range up to
0.4 lm measurement Ra.  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The most widely used method for measuring surface roughness in engineering is the
mechanical profilometer. The stylus is drawn over the surface at a constant speed. The
method is therefore unsuitable for some materials that are too delicate to be directly
traced by the probe. Also the surface height information gathered depends on the
radius of the probe tip [1]; for example, some surfaces have very narrow crevices and if
the probe tip width is greater than the crevice width, the tip cannot penetrate the
bottom of the crevice. The resulting signal will contain inaccurate surface height
information, as the high spatial frequencies in the profile are lost. These drawbacks
have created a need for alternative techniques to measure surface roughness.
Optical profilers have been developed that use focusing [2], interferometric [3] and
scattering [4] techniques to obtain a surface profile. The advantage of using an optical

*Corresponding author: Bausch and Lomb, Contact Lens Division, Waterford, Ireland. Tel.: 00353 51
859 600; fax: 0035351 859186; e-mail: lisaleonard@bausch.com.
0143-8166/98/$ see front matter  1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
PII: S 01 4 3-8 1 66 ( 9 8) 0 0 03 6 - 0

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L.C. Leonard, V. Toal/Optics and Lasers in Engineering 30 (1998) 433440

Fig. 1. Diagram of the Kth scatter.

system is that it is a non-contact technique and is therefore suitable for use on delicate
surfaces.
This paper presents a light scattering technique in which the light scattered from
a rough surface produces speckle. Other authors have demonstrated that a linear
relationship between speckle contrast and surface roughness exists up to 0.15 lm Ra
(centre-line average) roughness, when HeliumNeon light is used for opaque [5, 6]
and transparent [7] surfaces. Using high incident angles we have recently extended
this range of 0.4 lm Ra for a number of metallic surfaces.

2. Theory
When monochromatic, highly coherent light such as laser light, is scattered by an
object which is optically rough, a fine granular structure or speckle pattern is
produced. The appearance of the granular pattern bears no obvious relationship to
the microscopic properties of the illuminated object. In fact the pattern appears to be
very irregular and is described by statistical parameters. The surfaces of most materials are optically rough. This means that the surface height variations are at least of
the same order of magnitude as the wavelength of light used.
When a surface is illuminated by laser light the surface can be considered as
a source of secondary wavelets [8]. Thus, scattered light from a rough surface consists
of many wavelets, each arising from a different microscopic element of the surface
(Fig. 1). The speckle pattern is therefore formed by interference between a large
number of wavelets with random phase differences. If the microscopic details of the
surface are unknown the only way in which to characterise the speckle pattern is
through the use of statistical methods. Various authors [911] have investigated the
statistics of laser speckle. The resultant amplitude at an observation point, O can vary
between zero and a maximum value which is determined by the relative phases and
the amplitudes of the individual contributions.
The resultant complex amplitude A(x, y, z) is given by
,
A(x, y, z)" "a " exp(i
)
I
I
I

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435

where N is the number of scattered wavelets and a and

are the amplitude and
I
I
phase contributions from the kth scattering element on the surface. The intensity
I(x, y, z) of the wave is given by
I(x, y, z)""A(x, y, z)"
Speckle contrast C, is defined as the ratio of the standard deviation p, to the mean
intensity 1I2.
p"(1I2!1I2
I #I #I #2#I


,
1I2" 
N
p
C"
1I2
The fact that speckle patterns are only produced because of the roughness of
a surface [8] caused many people to investigate the possibility of using the speckle
phenomenon to measure surface roughness. Partially developed by speckle [13]
patterns occur when the coherence of the light is reduced or the roughness of the
surface is a fraction of the wavelength of the light. In this case the standard deviation is
less than the mean intensity and the contrast is less than unity.

3. Experimental
The experimental arrangement was set up as shown in Fig. 2. A Uniphase 10 mW
HeNe (wavelength of 632 nm) plane polarised laser was used as a coherent light
source. A Photon Control spatial filter with a 10 lm pinhole and a 20X microscope

Fig. 2. Schematic diagram of experimental arrangement.

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L.C. Leonard, V. Toal/Optics and Lasers in Engineering 30 (1998) 433440

objective was used to provide a clean expanded beam, which in turn was collimated by
a 37.5 cm focal length achromatic doublet. A lens, of 40 mm focal length was used

to produce a small intense light spot on the surface of interest at an average angle of
incidence of 30. The speckle contrast produced in the far-field plane was measured as
a function of the illuminated spot width [14], K which was calculated using the

following equation:
jf
K " Cos h
2a
where j was the wavelength of the laser light, f was the focal length of the lens ( ), 2a

was the diameter (mm) of the aperture and h was the incident angle of illumination.
The surface was then translated in its own plane as in Fig. 2. The speckle pattern
produced exhibited a phenomenon called speckle boiling [15]. When the object lies
within the focus of a converging lens and is translated say in the #x direction, the
speckles appear to move very rapidly in the same direction as the object. This
direction is reversed when the direction of motion of the object is reversed. When the
object lies outside the focus and is translated in the #x direction, the speckles move in
the opposite direction to that when the object lay inside the focus. Again the speckle
direction is reversed when the object motion is reversed. However, when the object
surface is at the focus of the lens, the speckles do not translate as the object moves but
increase greatly in size and remain in position, constantly changing shape or boiling.
The variation in intensity of the speckle pattern was detected using a 1P28
Hamamatsu photomultiplier tube in a light tight housing with a 200 lm pinhole in front
of the photocathode of the tube. The signal from the photomultiplier was sent via an
A/D converter to a PC running Acquisition PC software. This system allowed the signal
to be recorded and the contrast value to be calculated. The sample rate for each signal
was 200 samples/s. The sample rate combined with the total sample size (8192 samples)
meant that the scanning time was approximately 40 s. The surface was translated at
a rate of 150 lm/s so that the length of surface scanned was approximately 6000 lm.
A set of Rubert metal comparison [16] surfaces was used for these measurements.
The surfaces were finished using various machining techniques such as flat lapping,
grinding and polishing. The average Ra (centre-line average) values of the surfaces
were measured using a Talysurf-10 profilometer, shown in Table 1.
Table 1
Surface roughness of metallic specimens finished using flat lapped, grinding and polishing techniques
Flat lapped Ra (lm)

Ground Ra (lm)

Polished Ra (lm)

NA
NA
0.078
0.106
0.20
0.4

NA
0.02
0.05
0.1
0.2
0.4

0.0125
0.025
0.05
0.10
0.2
NA

NA: Not available.

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437

4. Results
A series of experiments was carried out in order to verify the basic principle of the
speckle contrast method i.e. that there was a linear relationship between the speckle
contrast and the surface roughness. The measurement range for the laser speckle
contrast technique was expected to be 0.020.3 times the wavelength of the laser light
used [11]. In this case the wavelength was 0.632 lm and so the useful range of up to
0.2 lm was expected. Each speckle contrast data point was obtained by averaging six
measurements taken on different parts of each surface. An error bar was used to show
the standard deviation (I) of each data point () in Figs. 3 and 4.
Initially flat lapped surfaces were examined, Fig. 3a, three samples were available
whose roughness values fell within the measurement range namely 0.078, 0.106 and
0.2 lm. Due to the lack of surfaces available it was not clear whether the relationship
was linear below 0.1 lm. The curve produced in Fig. 3b using the ground surfaces was
relatively smooth, but saturation occurred above 0.1 lm. For the polished surfaces as
in Fig. 3c the linear relationship can be clearly seen as greater range of surfaces were
available.
A paper by Birch [17], describes the use of oblique incident illumination in the
measurement of the flatness of non-optical surfaces. At high angles of incidence the
reflectance of a rough surface is higher than if the incident light is normal to the
surface. In effect the surface appears to be smoother. This implies that by using a high
incident angle one could measure a surface whose roughness value was approaching
the wavelength of the laser light.
With extension of the range in mind, the incident angle was increased to 80 and the
experiment was repeated for all of the surfaces. The 40 mm focal length converging
lens was replaced with a 200 mm lens in order allow greater space for manipulation of
the illumination optics and the detector.
The highest roughness of polished surface available was 0.2 lm and a linear
relationship was found to exist between the contrast and the surface roughness up to
0.2 lm. These results can be seen in Fig. 4a. The flat lapped and the ground surfaces
both had roughness values up to 0.4 lm Ra and it can be seen from Fig. 4b and c that
the measurement range was now increased to 0.4 lm for the flat lapped and the
ground surfaces.

5. Discussion
The relationship between the roughness and the speckle contrast for the flat lapped,
ground and polished metallic surfaces is shown in Fig. 3a, b and c, respectively. The
incident angle was kept at approximately 30 and it can be seen that the linear
relationship exists up to approximately 0.1 lm Ra after which a saturation effect is
observed, for all of the three metallic surfaces.
For the polished surface increasing the angle of incidence from 30 to 80 was found
to increase the measurement range by a factor of 2 in Fig. 4a, where 0.2 lm Ra was the
highest roughness available. When the flat lapped and ground surfaces (whose highest

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L.C. Leonard, V. Toal/Optics and Lasers in Engineering 30 (1998) 433440

Fig. 3. (a) Flat lapped surfaces, 30 incident angle; (b) Ground surfaces, 30 incident angle; (c) Polished
surfaces, 30 incident angle.

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439

Fig. 4. (a) Polished surfaces, 80 incident angle; (b) Flat lapped surfaces, 80 incident angle; (c) Ground
surfaces, 80 incident angle.

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L.C. Leonard, V. Toal/Optics and Lasers in Engineering 30 (1998) 433440

roughness values were 0.4 lm Ra) were examined using an 80 incident angle the
measurement range was found to increase by a factor of 4, as in Fig. 4b and c.
The results obtained in this study lend support for the use of non-contact, optical
measurement of surface roughness by the method of far-field laser speckle contrast. It
is clear that this and related techniques are worthy of further investigation.

Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the Metrology Department at Forbairt (the Irish
national agency for research and technology), the Mechanical and Manufacturing
Engineering Department, Trinity College Dublin, and Wavin ltd. for their support
throughout this project.

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