Dr.-Ing. O. Deutscher • Tel: 0211 / 6707 - 243 • E-Mail: oswald.deutscher@bfi.de 

The activities undertaken within the field of "Surface and Wear Technology" include the scanning, analysis and characterisation of surface topographies as an integral part of product quality. Besides visual appearance, attention is focused particularly on the service properties resulting from surface topography. This encompasses the production of, and stress-related changes to, surface topogra-phies.

Other central aspects include the optimisation of tribo-systems and the evaluation of materials' resis-tance to wear under diverse tribological conditions. Prominent aims in this respect are to reduce the wear-related costs and assure long-term stability of the required product quality.
Extensive expertise is available in the following areas, among others:

• Two-dimensional and three-dimensional scanning, analysis and evaluation of surface textures
• Determination of function-relevant surface characteristics, e.g. in relation to: texture transfer (e.g. from skin-pass roll to strip), changes in texture due to wear (e.g. roll roughness), long-wave textural components (e.g. chatter mark analysis), suitability for coating (e.g. paintabil-ity), suitability for bonding (e.g. adhesive bonding)
• Damage analyses of wear-exposed components 
  Reduction of wear-related costs through component optimisation
• Conduct of field and laboratory testing to solve defined wear problems
• Development of industrially oriented wear testing machines
• Analysis of materials' wear resistance to enable the selection of suitably durable materials and provide support in material developments
• Development and maintenance of tribological databases