Gloss of a metal surface is an important aspect for product quality evaluation. Evaluating the specular reflection is almost the same as evaluating the gloss. We propose a method that uses patterned area illumination to evaluate specular reflection. In specular reflection, the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. Consequently, when light (ray) of the area illumination, which has a striped pattern, are projected on a glossy metal surface, a striped pattern forms on the reflected image as a mirror-like reflection, and the sharpness of the striped pattern of the image provides information about the specular reflection on the surface. This characteristic is applied to a metal with a hairline surface finish. A hairline surface presents different glossiness at different viewpoints. When the direction of the striped pattern of illumination is changed, the sharpness of striped pattern on the reflected image varies owing to the surface roughness of the hairline finish. Therefore, we can evaluate the glossiness in various directions by rotating the pattern. The relationships between gloss evaluation value and surface roughness were indicated in our study. We tried the reproduction of the gloss evaluation by ray tracing to obtain the more detailed relationships between them. Ray tracing is a technique to generate an image in computer graphics. The approximate reproduction of gloss evaluation was obtained by the simulation.
Validity Analysis of Effective Medium Theory and Long Wave Approximation for the Optical Properties of Metal Surface Layer with Surface Roughness.
