A stochastic approach to paper surface characterisation and printability criteria

A coated paper surface is assumed to be random and isotropic. The height of rough paper is considered to be a two-dimensional random variable and is represented in terms of the spectral moments. These moments are used to characterise the paper surface for print quality. The percentage void and the sharpness index are derived in addition to the statistics of surface such as density of summits, contour length, excursion area, etc. in order to have better understanding of the behaviour of paper under printing. The analysis of eight sets of data collected on light and heavy coating weight (50-75 g m ^-2) paper samples revealed that the proposed method is capable of characterising the paper surfaces of different textures in a quantitative way. The ranking results of the proposed parameters are also found to be in close agreement with the results of other methods such as electron micrographs and MAN test.