Quantification of the Severity of Ridging in Ferritic Stainless Steel Sheets Using a Profilometric Technique

A new method to quantify the ridging phenomenon in ferritic stainless steels has been developed based on the evaluation of surface profiles after the tensile elongation of 100 mm wide sheet specimens. The ridging components of the surface profiles are extracted by a tailored spline filtering procedure. A ridging index is proposed to quantify the severity of the surface defect based on surface profile height and spac-ing parameters. The procedure is independent of the type of profilometer used as long as unfiltered raw profiles can be recorded. The reproducibility of the measurement method and its correlation with the visual assessment of strained specimens is discussed.