Surface roughness has considerable influence on its quality and function of products in precision and ultra-precision machining, and the same situation applies to engineering ceramic for rotary ultrasonic grinding machining (RUGM). This paper presents a new parameter, called fractal root mean square deviation, for evaluating engineering ceramic three-dimensional (3D) surface roughness of RUGM. Based on engineering ceramics surface of RUGM is typical isotropic, the mathematical model of fractal root mean square deviation was established, and it possesses double characteristics of absolute measurement and multi-scale. Then validation has been implemented, and fractal root mean square deviation is superior to evaluate engineering ceramic 3D surface roughness with better resolution and sensitivity. Furthermore, the relationship between main factor parameters and fractal root mean square deviation was proposed. The evaluation parameter and the results could be implemented in practice to get higher quality surface. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.