Effect of calendering on paper surface properties

Calendering of paper is an industrial finishing process designed to smoothen its surface so as to improve gloss as well as printability. In this article, we describe how calendering affects paper roughness on both microscopic and macroscopic length scales. We also discuss how these modifications relate to the morphology of the fibers composing the paper sheets. The characterization of the surface is carried out using an optical profilometer and two different species of fibers, as well as their mixture, are used. We first show that calendering induces modifications of the surface on all length scales measured and that these modifications are related by straightforward transformations. We also show that these results hold for papers formed from a mixture of fibers.