Nonlinear Thermal Protrusion and Slider Disk Contact Forces

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernhard Knigge ◽  
Andreas Moser ◽  
Jia-Yang Juang ◽  
Peter Baumgart
Keyword(s):  
Contact Force ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Contact Forces ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Thermal Protrusion ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Bearing Design ◽  
Heater Coil

Some of the recently shipped hard disk drives have a new technology to actively control the flying height between slider and disk. The slider to disk spacing is controlled by thermal protrusion actuation using a small heater coil which is located close to the read write element at the trailing end of the slider. By applying an electric current to the heater coil, the slider’s trailing end protrudes towards the disk and can be driven into contact with sufficiently high heating power. The contact force and the thermal protrusion efficiency is mainly controlled by air bearing design. In this paper we want to discuss the trade offs in air bearing design to achieve low contact force and high thermal actuation efficiency. We have done both numerical simulation and experimental measurements to investigate contact force and air bearing stiffness. Typically a softer air bearings will produce less contact force but usually exhibit worse flying height tolerances. We have found a nonlinear clearance change with applied heater power. At closer spacings, the pressure peak increases dramatically leading to reduced actuation efficiency. The actuation efficiency may also vary at different skew angles. For calibration purpose slider to disk touchdown requires contact. Due to different actuation efficiencies at different radii different contact forces are estimated.

Simulating the Air Bearing Flying Height in a Humid Environment

2007 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuyu Zhang ◽  
Brian Strom ◽  
Sungchang Lee ◽  
George Tyndall
Keyword(s):  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Hard Disk ◽  
Disk Drive ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Humid Environment ◽  
Bearing Design ◽  
Flying Attitude ◽  
Saturation Vapor

For a hard disk drive operating in a humid environment, the water vapor in the slider’s air bearing is typically compressed beyond its saturation vapor pressure, causing the vapor to condense. Consequently, the air bearing pressure decreases and the slider’s flying attitude adjusts to balance the forces from the suspension. A method for calculating this air bearing response to humid air is presented. Using one particular air bearing design as an example, several test cases are analyzed to illustrate the air bearing response for various temperatures and humidity levels. The calculated flying heights agree with those measured in commercial hard disk drives.

Partial Contact Head-Disk Interface With Thermal Protrusion

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Du Chen ◽  
David B. Bogy
Keyword(s):  
Vibration Amplitude ◽  
Dynamic Performance ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Head Disk Interface ◽  
Dynamic Simulations ◽  
Disk Interface ◽  
Partial Contact ◽  
Thermal Protrusion ◽  
Bearing Design

A new partial contact head disk interface (HDI) with thermal protrusion is proposed for magnetic recording with densities of 1 Tbit/in2 and above. This HDI has the advantage of maintaining light contact between the slider and the disk, so that both the bouncing vibration amplitude and the contact force are small compared with a traditional partial contact HDI. The slider’s dynamic simulations are carried out to analyze the effect of various factors within the HDI on the slider’s dynamic performance, including the friction and adhesion between the slider and the disk, the track profile morphology of the disk and the air bearing design. It is found that the bouncing vibration amplitude can be reduced to the level of the flying height modulation (FHM) of a non-contact air bearing slider without thermal protrusion.

Optimization of Air Bearing Slider Design

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wending Fang ◽  
Yujuan Wang ◽  
Yunfei Chen
Keyword(s):  
Simulated Annealing ◽  
Simulated Annealing Algorithm ◽  
Optimal Algorithm ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Hard Disk ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Disk Drives ◽  
Slider Air Bearing ◽  
Bearing Design

Hard disk drives continue to increase the data storage density. The parameters of the head slider flying attitude must satisfy very strict performance goals. This paper focuses on the topic of the simulated annealing algorithm when it is applied to the problem of slider air bearing design in hard disk drives. The objective is to minimize the static flying height, to keep the pitch angle within a reasonable range, and to minimize the roll angle. The design variables include recess depth and geometry configuration of the slider air bearing surface. A typical tri-pad slider was taken as the physical model to demonstrate the validity of the optimal algorithm. Results show that simulated annealing is efficient for the optimization of the slider air bearing design. The static air bearing characteristics were enhanced significantly.

Design and Analysis of Slider’s Landing Pads for Fast Take-Off Performance in Magnetic Hard Disk Drives

1999 ◽  
Vol 121 (4) ◽  
pp. 955-960 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yong Hu
Keyword(s):  
Contact Force ◽  
New Technology ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Hard Disk ◽  
Disk Drive ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Trailing Edge ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Magnetic Hard Disk ◽  
Pad Wear

Exponential growth in both capacity and performance has been exhausting a lot of existing technologies in magnetic hard disk drive industry, one of them being laser zone texturing. Maintaining such a rapid growth requires innovative technologies. Adding landing pads to a slider’s air hearing surface (ABS) appears to be able to further stretch the glide/stiction envelope into the ultra-low glide and stiction regime. To materialize this new technology, the pad wear needs to be minimized, underlining the importance of the fast take-off air bearing characteristics. This paper analyzes the slider’s landing pad designs for fast take-off performance through the partial contact air bearing simulation of a take-off process. Two landing pad designs (3-pad and full texture) are created on a suhambient pressure ABS. The contact force and its center profiles as well as the evolution of the contact pressure contour are used to characterize the movement of the contact location during the take-off process. The effects of the absolute and relative pad heights as well as the rear pad location on both the transition of the contact location and the rate of contact force decrease are calculated. While raising leading pads delays the transition of the contact location from the leading pads to rear pad, distancing the rear pad from the trailing edge greatly facilitates the movement of the contact location from the rear pad to the trailing edge. A fully textured ABS with a reasonably low and uniform pad height as well as rear pads being well distanced from the trailing edge offers a fast take-off performance.

Effect of Intermolecular Forces on the Static and Dynamic Performance of Air Bearing Sliders: Part II—Dependence of the Stability on Hamaker Constant, Suspension Preload and Pitch Angle

2005 ◽  
Vol 128 (1) ◽  
pp. 203-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vineet Gupta ◽  
David B. Bogy
Keyword(s):  
Pitch Angle ◽  
Dynamic Performance ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Intermolecular Forces ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Total Force ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Force Increase ◽  
The Stability ◽  
Fly Height

Intermolecular and surface forces contribute significantly to the total forces acting on air bearing sliders for flying heights below 5 nm. Their contributions to the total force increase sharply with the reduction in flying height, and hence their existence can no longer be ignored in air bearing simulation for hard disk drives. Various experimentally observed dynamic instabilities can be explained by the inclusion of these forces in the model for low flying sliders. In this paper parametric studies are presented using a 3-DOF model to better understand the effect of the Hamaker constants, suspension pre load and pitch angle on the dynamic stability/instability of the sliders. A stiffness matrix is used to characterize the stability in the vertical, pitch, and roll directions. The fly height diagrams are used to examine the multiple equilibriums that exist for low flying heights. It has been found that the system instability increases as the magnitude of the van der Waals force increases. It has also been found that higher suspension pre load and higher pitch angles tend to stabilize the system.

Design and Dynamics of Flying Height Control Slider With Piezoelectric Nanoactuator in Hard Disk Drives

2006 ◽  
Vol 129 (1) ◽  
pp. 161-170 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jia-Yang Juang ◽  
David B. Bogy ◽  
C. Singh Bhatia
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Study ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Hard Disk ◽  
Areal Density ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Disk Drives ◽  
Adhesion Forces ◽  
Surface Design ◽  
Ultrahigh Density

To achieve the areal density goal in hard disk drives of 1Tbit∕in.2 the minimum physical spacing or flying height (FH) between the read/write element and disk must be reduced to ∼2nm. A brief review of several FH adjustment schemes is first presented and discussed. Previous research showed that the actuation efficiency (defined as the ratio of the FH reduction to the stroke) was low due to the significant air bearing coupling. In this paper, an air bearing surface design, Slider B, for a FH control slider with a piezoelectric nanoactuator is proposed to achieve virtually 100% efficiency and to increase dynamics stability by minimizing the nanoscale adhesion forces. A numerical study was conducted to investigate both the static and dynamic performances of the Slider B, such as uniformity of gap FH with near-zero roll over the entire disk, ultrahigh roll stiffness and damping, low nanoscale adhesion forces, uniform FH track-seeking motion, dynamic load/unload, and FH modulation. Slider B was found to exhibit an overall enhancement in performance, stability, and reliability in ultrahigh density magnetic recording.

Air Bearing Pushback in Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shaomin Xiong ◽  
Robert Smith ◽  
Chanh Nguyen ◽  
Youfeng Zhang ◽  
Yeoungchin Yoon
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Recording ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Hard Disk ◽  
Disk Drive ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Magnetic Media ◽  
Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording ◽  
Height Control ◽  
Different Dimensions

Abstract The air bearing surface is critical to the spacing control in current hard disk drives (HDDs). Thermal protrusions, including thermal flying height control (TFC) and writer coil protrusion, drive the reader/writer elements closer to the magnetic media. The spacing control actuation efficiency depends on the air bearing push back response after the TFC or writer protrudes. In the next generation hard disk drive technology, heat assisted magnetic recording (HAMR), laser induced protrusions further complicate the spacing control. The laser induced protrusions, such as the localized NFT protrusion and a wider change of the crown and camber, have very different dimensions and transient characteristics than the traditional TFC and writer protrusion. The dimension of the NFT protrusion is relatively smaller, and the transient is much faster than the TFC protrusion. However, it is found that the NFT protrusion is large enough to generate an air bearing push back effect, which changes the read and write spacing when the laser is powered on. To accurately control spacing in HAMR, this push back effect has to be taken into account.

An Efficient FE Analysis for Complex Low Flying Air-Bearing Slider Designs in Hard Disk Drives—Part I: Static Solution

2009 ◽  
Vol 131 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Puneet Bhargava ◽  
David B. Bogy
Keyword(s):  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Hard Disk ◽  
Static Solution ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Pressure Gradients ◽  
Disk Drives ◽  
Bearing Stiffness ◽  
Novel Method ◽  
Mesh Refinements

Prediction of the steady state flying height and attitude of air-bearing sliders in hard disk drives via simulations is the basis of their design process. Over the past few years air-bearing surfaces have become increasingly complex incorporating deep etches and steep wall profiles. In this paper we present a novel method of solving the inverse problem for air-bearing sliders in hard disk drives that works well for such new designs. We also present a new method for calculating the static air-bearing stiffness by solving three linear systems of equations. The formulation is implemented, and convergence studies are carried out for the method. Mesh refinements based on flux jumps and pressure gradients are found to work better than those based on other criteria.

A Study of Subambient Pressure Tri-Pad Sliders Using Acoustic Emission

1998 ◽  
Vol 120 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. G. Khurshudov ◽  
F. E. Talke
Keyword(s):  
Acoustic Emission ◽  
Contact Force ◽  
Contact Forces ◽  
Constant Speed ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Contact Behavior ◽  
Disk Interface

Acoustic emission is used to study the contact behavior of subambient pressure tri-pad sliders during start/stop and constant speed operation. The contact force at the slider/disk interface is determined as a function of velocity and the dependence of contact force on flying height is investigated. The results indicate that contact forces for typical subambient pressure tri-pad sliders are on the order of a few mN.

Effect of Ultra-Thin Liquid Lubricant Films on Dynamics of Nano-Spacing Flying Head Sliders in Hard Disk Drives

2004 ◽  
Vol 126 (3) ◽  
pp. 565-572 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norio Tagawa ◽  
Noritaka Yoshioka ◽  
Atsunobu Mori
Keyword(s):  
Film Thickness ◽  
Hard Disk Drives ◽  
Lubricant Film ◽  
Flying Height ◽  
Air Bearing ◽  
Disk Drives ◽  
Lubricant Film Thickness ◽  
Liquid Lubricant ◽  
Lubricant Films ◽  
Bearing Dynamics

This paper describes the effect of ultra-thin liquid lubricant films on air bearing dynamics and flyability of nano-spacing flying head sliders in hard disk drives. The dynamics of a slider was monitored using Acoustic Emission (AE) and Laser Doppler Vibrometer (LDV). The disks with lubricant on one half of disk surface thicker than the other half as well as with uniform thickness lubricant were used to investigate the interactions between the slider and lubricant film experimentally. As a result, it was found that the flying height at which the slider-lubricant contact occurs depends on the lubricant film thickness and it increases as the lubricant film thickness increases. Its flying height is also dependent on the mobile lubricant film thickness under the condition that the total lubricant film thicknesses are the same and the lubricant bonded ratios are different. It increases as the mobile lubricant film thickness increases. The slider-lubricant contact flying height based on the theory for capillary waves is in good agreement with the experimental results. Regard to air bearing dynamics due to the slider-lubricant interactions, it also depends on the mobile lubricant thickness as well as the total lubricant film thickness. However, we should carry out more experimental and theoretical studies in order to confirm and verify these experimental results. In addition, the effect of nonuniform lubricant film thickness on head/disk interface dynamics has been studied. It was found that the lubricant film thickness nonuniformity caused by the slider-lubricant interactions could be observed.

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