The aim of this study was the application of the geo-accumulation index and geostatistical methods to the assessment of forest soil contamination with heavy metals in the Babia Góra National Park (BGNP). For the study, 59 sample plots were selected to reflect all soil units (soil subtypes) in the studied area and take into account various forms of terrain. The content of organic carbon and total nitrogen, pH, hydrolytic acidity, the base cations and heavy metals content were determined in the soil samples. The geo-accumulation index (Igeo) was calculated, enabling estimation of the degree of soil pollution. The tested soils are characterized by strong contamination with heavy metals, especially with lead. The concentration of heavy metals in the surface horizons of the tested soils exceeds allowable concentration. The content of heavy metals was related to the content of soil organic matter, soil acidity and altitude. Higher altitudes are dominated by coniferous tree stands, which are accompanied by acidic, poorly decomposed organic horizons. Our study has confirmed the impact of pollutants transported from industrial areas on the amount of heavy metals in soils of the BGNP.

River training structures; such as submerged groynes are low profile linear structures that are generally located on the outside bank to form groynes fields and prevent the erosion of stream banks by keeping a flow away from it. In the present research, the maximum scour depth was measured based on laboratory experiments where different shapes of submerged groynes (I-shape, L-shape, T-shape) were used as sort of countermeasures to investigate about most shapes that reduce the scour around them. The result of submerged groynes showed a clear decrease in scour depth ratio due to increasing sub-merged ratio and increase the scour hole geometry with increasing of flow intensity, and also Froude number. The maxi-mum scour hole in this research was observed at T-shape groyne and then followed by I-shape groyne and L-shape groyne. The maximum scour depth that cased by I-shape was more than L-shape by a percentage about 8.2%, and it was less than T-shape by a percentage about 16.4%.

This paper presents methods of separating the plateau part for various types of two-process profiles, having the traces of two processes. The traditional method based on the plateau-valley threshold, according to the ISO 13565-3 standard, is not always sufficient, since the valley portion can include plateau roughness. Starting and finishing points of each plateau in the measured profiles should be determined. The procedure found in the technical literature depends on setting not only the plateau-valley threshold but also a lower threshold. This approach was a little modified for profiles that contain both random and deterministic topography components. A new procedure of determination of the lower threshold was proposed for stratified profiles containing two deterministic parts. The valleys can be characterized by their widths and the distance between them. In addition, a description of the material probability curve is proposed.

Applications of morphological filters for two-process profiles were analysed. Dilation, closing and alternating sequential (closing +  opening) filters were used with a circle (disk) as a structuring element. An original method of a disk radius selection was elaborated for two-process profiles. This procedure was applied for many simulated and measured profiles. Behaviors of morphological filters were compared with those of double Gaussian (Rk) filter. Robust filter was also taken into consideration. In calculation, TalyMap software was used. The proposed procedure was found to be very useful. It was developed for 2D profiles but it can be easily extended for an areal (3D) surface topography filtering. From among morphological filters, the alternate sequential filter is suggested.

This paper concerns the issues of measurement techniques, analysis and assessment of the machined surface geometric structure. The aim of this work was to show the application of surface analysis in diagnosing the causes of discrepancies occurring in the manufacturing process, which may result from ill-matched (poorly fitting) process parameters. An appropriate system of control and interpretation of results may allow early reaction to unfavorable trends (for example blunting of the tool) and prevention of undesirable defects. The subject of research was a waste basket used in the construction of retaining sewer systems. In this paper, the quality of the waste basket as well as its manufacturing process were analyzed and assessed. The research was carried out with the use of three measurement stands, i.e. optical microscopy (OM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and white light interferometer (WLI). The surface analysis proved to be important from the viewpoint of outlining the production process as well as improving the product quality. The software used for topographical analysis appeared to be significant for the success of the analysis, providing notable economic effects, namely the lack of defects.

In this paper distortion of surface topography measurement results by improper selection of the reference plane is taken into consideration. The following types of surfaces from cylindrical elements were analyzed: cylinder liners after plateau honing, cylinder liners with additionally burnished oil pockets and turned piston skirts. Surface topographies of these elements after a low wear process were also studied. In order to obtain areal surface topography parameters, the form was eliminated using cylinders and polynomials of the following degrees: 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 10 and 12. Parameters of surfaces after form removal were compared. After analysis of results the reference elements for each kind of surface were recommended. A special procedure was proposed in order to select the degree of a polynomial. This method is based on surface topography changes with increase of polynomial degree. The effect of improper form elimination on measuring uncertainty was studied.

The proper interaction of bone tissue - the natural porous biomaterial - with a porous coated intra-osseous implant is conditioned, among others, by the implant porous coating poroaccessibility for bone tissue adaptive ingrowth. The poroaccessibility is the ability of implant porous coating outer layer to accommodate the ingrowing bone tissue filling in its pore space and effective new formed bone mineralizing in the pores to form a biomechanically functional bone-implant fixation. The functional features of the microtopography of intra-osseous implant porous surfaces together with the porosity of pore space of the outer layer of the porous coating are called by bioengineers the porostructural-osteoconductive properties of the porous coated implant. The properties are crucial for successful adaptive bone tissue ingrowth and further long-term (secondary) biomechanical stability of the boneimplant interface. The poroaccessibility of intra-osseous implants porous coating outer layers is characterized by - the introduced in our previous papers - set of stereometric parameters of poroaccessibility: the effective volumetric porosity fVef, the index of the porous coating space capacity VPM, the representative surface porosity fSrep, the representative pore size pSrep, the representative angle of the poroaccessibility Wrep and the bone-implant interface adhesive surface enlargement index y. Presented in this paper, an original method of evaluation of the porostructural-osteoconductive properties of intra-osseous implant porous coatings outer layer by means of the parameters of poroaccessibility was preliminary verified during experimental tests performed on the representative examples of porous coated femoral stems and acetabular cups of various hip endoprostheses. The computer-aided stereometric evaluation of the microstructure of implant porous coatings outer layer can be now realized by the authoring application software PoroAccess_1.0 elaborated in our research team in Java programming language

This paper presents a comprehensive methodology for measuring and characterizing the surface topographies on machined steel parts produced by precision machining operations. The performed case studies concern a wide spectrum of topographic features of surfaces with different geometrical structures but the same values of the arithmetic mean height Sa. The tested machining operations included hard turning operations performed with CBN tools, grinding operations with Al2O3 ceramic and CBN wheels and superfinish using ceramic stones. As a result, several characteristic surface textures with the Sa roughness parameter value of about 0.2 μm were thoroughly characterized and compared regarding their potential functional capabilities. Apart from the standard 2D and 3D roughness parameters, the fractal, motif and frequency parameters were taken in the consideration.

The aim of the work was to obtain thin bismuth oxide films containing, at room temperature, the Bi1,5Er0,5O3 phase. This phase corresponds to the structure of the high-temperature δ-Bi2O3 phase, in pure bismuth oxide, characterized by the highest ionic conductivity of all known solid state ionic conductors. The high-temperature δ-Bi2O3 phase with the face centered cubic structure, in pure bismuth oxide, occurs only at temperature above 730°C.

Stabilization of the δ-Bi2O3 phase at room temperature was achieved by an addition of the erbium together with the employment of the Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) technique. The influence of an amount of Er alloying and the film thickness on surface morphology, microstructure, phase composition of thin films were investigated. The velocity of deposition of thin layers of bismuth stabilized with erbium in the PLD process using the Nd: YAG laser was about 0.5 nm/s.

The investigation results of erbium doped bismuth oxide thin films deposited onto (0001) oriented Al2O3 monocrystalline substrate are presented.

Thin films of uniform thickness, without cracks, and porosity were obtained. All deposited thin films (regardless of the film thickness or erbia (Er2O3) content) exhibited a columnar structure. In films stabilized with erbium, up to approx. 250 nm thickness, the columns have a diameter at the base from 25 to 75 nm. The columns densely and tightly fill the entire volume of the films. With increasing of the film thickness increases, porosity also significantly increases. In thin layers containing from 20 to 30 mole % Er2O3 the main identified phase at room temperature is Bi1.5Er0.5O3. It is similar to the defective fluorite-type structure, and belongs to the Fm-3m space group. This phase corresponds to the structure of the high-temperature δ-Bi2O3 phase in pure bismuth oxide.

In this paper both envelope approach and morphological filters for characterisation of surface textures were proposed, applied and thoroughly examined. Obtained results were compared with those received after appliance of commonly-used algorithms. The effect of appliance of proposed procedures on surface topography parameters (from ISO 25178 standard) was taken into consideration. The following types of surface textureswere assessed: two-process plateau-honed cylinder liners, plateau-honed cylinder liners with additionally burnished dimples, turned piston skirts, grinded and/or isotropic topographies. It was assumed that envelope characteristics (envelope filtration) can provide results useful for assessments of deep and/or wide oil-reservoirs especially when they are edge located. Moreover, some near-valley areas of surface texture details can be less distorted when envelope filtering is accomplished. It was also found that closing and/or opening envelope filtration can be valuable for reduction of some surface topography measurement errors.

Surface topography assessments with valley exploration are of great importance. Two-process surfaces are often proposed for many combustion engines. One of the errors committed in surface topography measurements and analysis are those that occur during data processing. In this paper, improper areal form removal was taken into consideration for plateau-honed cylindrical surfaces with additionally burnished oil pockets. Usually, the reference plane is established by application of: fitting algorithms (e.g. cylindrical shape), polynomials, filters and other procedures. In many cases, the influence of the reference plane was not fully recognized during valley depth consideration. Moreover, the influence of areal form removal with edge-to-dimple and valley‑to-dimple distances was not precisely defined. In this research, commonly used algorithms for form separation in surface topography analysis were proposed for the applications being considered. The digital filter bandwidth was also specified for valley depth analysis. The distortion of edge‑located oil pockets was specified. It was assumed that application of robust techniques does not necessarily provide the desired results.

The paper presents research results of multilayer systems composed of alternate Cu/Ni layers. The layers thickness obtained by the galvanic treatment was determined by using the transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffraction method in the grazing incidence diffraction geometry. The surface morphology was observed using scanning electron microscope with EDS microanalysis. Observation of the surface topography of systems using the atomic force microscope was also carried out.