Fractal analysis of erosion surfaces

Fractal analysis of steady-state erosion surfaces generated by erodents of widely different hardnesses on single crystal sapphire shows surprising similarities in spite of a large difference in erosion rates and single impact morphology. This study quantifies the surfaces in terms of the surface texture measurements using recently developed image analysis techniques. The interpretation for such similarities is that a single mechanism of material removal is operative for all erodents. The differences are explained in terms of the efficiency of crack initiation in the target by the two erodents.