A Numerical Simulation of the Head-Disk Assembly in Magnetic Hard Disk Files: Part I—Component Models

In previous papers the dynamics of air bearing sliders used to carry the read/write transducers in magnetic hard disk files has been studied. These studies are useful in evaluating the steady flying and stability of sliders subjected to various disturbances. They are particularly useful in finding the natural frequencies of the air bearings. However, in hard disk drives the sliders are attached to suspensions, which are highly specialized structures that connect the sliders to the positioning actuators. These suspensions have to be relatively stiff in lateral translation, but very flexible in pitch and roll. This latter feature is accomplished by the gimbal or flexure that connects the slider to the end of the suspension. The suspension-gimbal structure has its own natural frequencies, which can be excited by disturbances such as track seeking and impacting the actuator against the crash stop. In order to study the effect of these structures on the head-disk spacing it is necessary to include them in the numerical simulator. In this two part study such a simulator is developed. In Part I the component parts and their interfaces are modeled. In Part II the numerical simulation of the coupled system is accomplished and the numerical results of several sample simulations are presented and discussed.