The tiles I've seen (including physically touching) have been smooth as a countertop, at least when new.
I believe this pix was taken in the post-FIB era. Flexible insulation blanket. Not all tiles could be replaced by FIB but some could and were. I imagine the heat load was not very high in those positions, so FIB makes sense. And I know FIB looks exactly like the wavy blanket quilt look you're talking about and is seen in the pix. FIB had another name which I forget. The nomex based "frizzie" (FRSI?) looked less quilt-y, more like a prom dress fabric, well, kinda. I don't see anything I recognize as frizzie in the linked pix. Frizzie looks like the inside layer of a firemans coat, which also probably doesn't help describe it very much, yet, there it is.
TLDR is that wavy tile is not a tile, its a quilt.
Most people know the engines were under continuous development for practically the whole program; well, so was the heat shield system. I can't be bothered to look it up and it doesn't matter anyway, but I don't think the same TPS configuration ever flew more than three or so times in a row without some new idea being tried, at least in the early decades. Continuous integration.
Personally I always suspected we'd lose more orbiters due to continuous integration fiascos than mechanical damage. Then again they spent a lot of money on research, Q+A, and experimentation so what would be a disaster in a typical IT shop works pretty well in aerospace.
I believe this pix was taken in the post-FIB era. Flexible insulation blanket. Not all tiles could be replaced by FIB but some could and were. I imagine the heat load was not very high in those positions, so FIB makes sense. And I know FIB looks exactly like the wavy blanket quilt look you're talking about and is seen in the pix. FIB had another name which I forget. The nomex based "frizzie" (FRSI?) looked less quilt-y, more like a prom dress fabric, well, kinda. I don't see anything I recognize as frizzie in the linked pix. Frizzie looks like the inside layer of a firemans coat, which also probably doesn't help describe it very much, yet, there it is.
TLDR is that wavy tile is not a tile, its a quilt.
Most people know the engines were under continuous development for practically the whole program; well, so was the heat shield system. I can't be bothered to look it up and it doesn't matter anyway, but I don't think the same TPS configuration ever flew more than three or so times in a row without some new idea being tried, at least in the early decades. Continuous integration.
Personally I always suspected we'd lose more orbiters due to continuous integration fiascos than mechanical damage. Then again they spent a lot of money on research, Q+A, and experimentation so what would be a disaster in a typical IT shop works pretty well in aerospace.