Numerical analysis of off-track vibration of head gimbal assembly in hard disk drive caused by the airflow

The problem of flow-induced vibration of head gimbal assembly (HGA) in hard disk drive (HDD) is analyzed by means of numerical models. Flow field is calculated in a fraction of physical domain called extended wedge-like domain. For this purpose, appropriate inlet and outlet boundary conditions are specified. The aerodynamic disturbances generated by the slider are studied by performing flow calculations for the cases of with and without slider. It is observed that the slider blocks the airflow causing a high-pressure region in the proximity of the leading surface of the slider. In addition, significant vortical structures are found being generated by the side surfaces of the slider. A finite element model is developed for calculating the response of HGA to the aerodynamic excitations. It is found that the flow disturbances generated by the slider play a significant role in the off-track vibration of the HGA.     

Numerical ball swaging analysis of head arm for hard disk drives

Ball swaging is a method of joining the head gimbal assembly (HGA) with the arm of an E-Block by plastically deforming part of the baseplate against the arm. However, the force of the plastic deformation causes deformation of the HGA, and can cause flying height, static attitude, and vibration of the HGA to vary. In this study, we performed an elasto-plastic large-deformation analysis for ball swaging. Using the experimental results, we verified the accuracy of the numerical results for ball swaging and determined the deformation mechanism and the effect of the ball swaging. From these results, we clarified that the baseplate is influenced by the arm deformation due to the asymmetric stress and the baseplate deformation is a superposition of the arm’s deformation on the baseplate’s own deformation.     

Non-operational shock analysis and design of head gimbal assembly in spinning data storage devices

The work presented in this paper was motivated by the experimental observation of de-bonding phenomena between head gimbal assembly (HGA) and suspension for a commercial 3.5-in. enterprise HDD under non-operational 250?G shock test, which leads to revisit design of HGA/suspension with objective placed on withstanding shocks between the head slider and the suspension. In this study experimental observation and numerical finite element studies were conducted to understand such effect on the mechanical failure of HGA when it is subjected to non-operational shock in parked position on ramp. It was observed that by changing flexure angle in HGA, shock stress can be reduced. FEA simulation results have been presented to verify the findings.     

A novel contact slider/gimbal to raise recording density in flexible disk drives

 We developed the soft and full-contact head/gimbal assembly (HGA) for card-size flexible disk drive. We used a 150 μg slider and a flexible beam of BeCu alloy to realize soft contact. We designed our HGA using FEM simulation and optimized the load force, the load pressure, and the stress on the beam. We report the mechanical characteristics, read-write signals, and the vibration of the HGA. A new type loading/unloading mechanism was developed for the removable flexible medium, and confirmed the reliability of the loading/unloading mechanism by the deformation of the HGA and the loaded medium. Received: 5 July 2001/Accepted: 1 November 2001     

Optimizing servo-signal design for a hard-disk drives

To improve the non-repeatable runout (NRRO), repeatable runout (RRO), and nonlinearity of the position signal in hard-disk drives (HDDs), we established criteria for the off-track direction and for the bit direction. Position-signal nonlinearity and NRRO degradation are largely due to the interaction between track width, erase band size, and the sensitivity distribution of the head. So one criterion is for position-signal sensitivity. The other criterion is for burst-bit density, which causes RRO degradation. Using these criteria to compare, theoretically and experimentally, the effectiveness with which the quality of the position signal could be maintained using amplitude and phase patterns confirmed that the phase pattern is superior to the amplitude pattern.     

Narrowband performance of active control on flow-induced vibrations inside hard disk drives

This paper presents an experimental study of narrowband active control on the flow-induced vibrations (FIV) on the head gimbals assembly (HGA) in a working hard disk drive (HDD). Firstly, experiments with an analog feedback close-loop were conducted as demonstration for narrowband active control on principal peaks in the spectrum of the off-plate FIV on the HGA whose signal was collected with a 1-D laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). Secondly, the modal testing on the experimental HDD was carried out to find out where the spectrum principal peaks focused in current active control come from. Thirdly, a digital feedback control close-loop was implemented in experiments for narrowband suppression on the focused FIV spectrum peaks on the HGA. In those close-loops, the off-plate HGA vibrations detected by the LDV were used as feedback error signals, then the signals was passed through an analog or digital controller to generate feedback signals to drive a piezoelectric disk to actuate feedback acoustic pressure around the HGA. Active control experiments were conducted in narrow bands on five principal peaks in the HGA off-plate vibration spectrum, around 1,256, 1,428, 2,141, 2,519 and 3,469 Hz, respectively. It is shown that distinct narrowband suppression of at least 10 dB can be achieved on all these HGA vibration peaks.     

Topology optimization of actuator arms in hard disk drives for reducing bending resonance-induced off-tracks

The objective of this work is to find an optimal actuator arm configuration in hard disk drives (HDD’s) for sufficiently small arm bending-induced off-track error by maximizing the fundamental eigenfrequency of arm bending modes subject to a constraint on the mass moment of inertia of arms. By applying the topology optimization method for the purpose, an arm configuration having two balancing holes instead of a single balancing hole in conventional designs was obtained. It is numerically shown that an optimized arm configuration substantially increases the arm bending resonant frequency with little change in the mass moment of inertia of arms in comparison with conventional designs having a single balancing hole. Finally, the performance of an optimized actuator arm is verified by showing that the eigenfrequencies associated with arm bending modes are increased by about 100?Hz and the off-track error by measuring the position error signal (PES) from actual sample drives can be reduced by as much?as?25%.     

Optimal design of fluid dynamic bearings to develop a robust disk-spindle system in a hard disk drive utilizing modal analysis

This research proposes an optimal design methodology for fluid dynamic bearings (FDBs) in a hard disk drive to improve the dynamic performance of the disk-spindle system. We solved equations of motion for the rigid rotor supported by FDBs with five degrees of freedom. Five modal damping ratios were selected as multi-objective functions. The constraint equations were the friction torque of the FDBs and the stiffness and damping coefficients related to under-damped vibration modes. Ten major design variables of the FDBs were chosen for this optimization problem. The steady-state whirl radius and the shock response at half-speed whirl of the rotating rigid spindle-bearing system were evaluated as RRO and NRRO, respectively. The RRO and NRRO of the optimal design were compared with those of the conventional design. Our results show that the proposed method effectively reduces RRO and NRRO.     

Vibration analysis of a contact slider/gimbal of a flexible disk drive

 To design contact-type gimbal system for a newly developed removable flexible disk drive called Card size flexible disk drive (CFDD) (Shinpuku et al., 2001; Ryoson et al., 2001), the gimbal's vibration characteristics in the disk-rotation direction were measured and simulated using FEM. To determine the relationship between vibration and friction in the head disk interface (HDI), a hard disk was also used. The friction characteristics were inserted into the FEM model based on the results. The gimbal was modified to suppress vibration amplitude to half in both simulation and experiment. Received: 5 July 2001/Accepted: 1 November 2001 Paper presented at the 12th Annual Symposium on Information Storage and Processing Systems, Santa Clara, CA, USA, 28–29 June, 2001.     

Position error signal generation in hard disk drives based on a field programmable gate array (FPGA)

The position error signal (PES) in current hard disk drives is generated from the embedded servo data and used as the input for the track following controller. The servo pattern design and the decoding are both quite complicated in terms of the servo writing and servo detection, but they are important for the system dynamics study and track following controller design. In this paper, a novel scheme based on discrete fourier transformation (DFT) to decode the servo signal from a special magnetic servo pattern and generate the PES is proposed. In the scheme adjacent magnetic tracks with different frequencies are recorded to the disk and used as servo tracks to encode the position information. Simulation results show that the amplitudes at the two writing frequencies in the readback spectrum depend on the magnetic head position. The quadrature PES defined by the difference of the amplitudes is almost linear between the two adjacent tracks The simulation and off-line experimental results analysis agree with each other and prove the feasibility of this scheme. A real-time signal acquiring and processing system with a commercial field programmable gate array (FPGA) and ADC/DAC chips was built, and the proposed scheme was implemented in the FPGA to do the high-speed signal analysis. The magnetic head position information is extracted from the readback spectrum in the FPGA and transferred to a PC host for real-time graphic display using a labview interface. The system demonstrates an ability to generate the PES at 25 K samples per second with a resolution around 3 nm. The sampling rate can be enhanced further to 125 kHz if more servo sectors are written to the disk. This system provides a re-configurable research stage for studying the dynamic behavior of hard disk drives and for developing the control algorithm for track following.     

Improvement of slider off-track vibration through design parameter modifications of a compatible FDB spindle system

Recently, the hard disk drive (HDD) industry has tried to use a compatible spindle system regardless of the number of disks because of the resulting cost reduction and standardization of components. The center of gravity (CG) location predominantly affects the disk and slider off-track vibration, which is why the rocking mode of a spindle system is affected by the CG. Any changes to the CG affect the operational vibration of the spindle system. In a compatible fluid dynamic bearing (FDB) spindle system, changing the number of disks may alter the CG. Nevertheless, research into the compatibility of FDB designs has not been undertaken. In this study, FDB design parameters were selected to reduce the slider off-track vibration with variations in the CG considering a compatible spindle system. First, a verified finite element (FE) model of a spindle system was constructed. The amplitude and frequency of the rocking mode were compared between a one-disk spindle system and a two-disk spindle system using the FE model, considering the relationship between the CG location, which is changed by the number of disks, and the location of the upper and lower journal bearings. HDD prototypes were then manufactured using the improved design. Based on the manufactured spindle system, the variations in the rocking mode characteristics and slider off-track vibration were measured and operational vibration tests were performed to verify the effect of the number of disks on the slider off-track vibration. An improved FDB spindle design was developed with a reduced rocking mode, and a compatible spindle system was proposed.     

Linear actuator for precise track following

A new air bearing linear actuator with a Voice Coil Motor (VCM) was investigated for a precise head track following in an Hard Disk Drive (HDD) magnetic recording tester system. The actuator has a servo bandwidth of two times as wide as that of a conventional HDD, due to a high stiffness without any friction. A low-pass filter was introduced to precisely monitor the step response behavior by reducing the relatively large noise of the used optical fiber sensor. The effect of the low-pass filter was investigated comparing with the other method. Track following accuracy was also tested by using a conventional 2.5-inch hard disk drive. The head installed on the actuator could follow on a track by using Position Error Signal (PES) from the servo pattern. When a Double Metal In Gap (D-MIG) head of 4 μm track-width was loaded on a disk rotating at 4200rpm, the tracking error could be compressed down to one-twentieth of the track-width. The tested system did not show any azimuth error of head-tracking due to the linear motion. In conclusion, the air-bearing linear actuator is suitable for a precise track following mechanism of a spin-stand tester for an HDD system.     

Investigation of slider out-of-plane and in-plane vibrations during the track-seeking process

This paper employs the coupled air bearing model and modal order reduction (MOR) model of head stack assembly (HSA) to investigate the track-seeking process of a femto slider. Simulations indicate that the flying height and the pitch angle may increase or decrease significantly, depending on the track-seeking directions. For the slider studied in this paper, it is safer for sweeping from OD to ID, than sweeping from ID to OD. The most serious vibration is the off-track vibration, and it is highly related to the sweeping acceleration profile. A smooth acceleration profile is crucial to reduce all the vibrations of slider, especially the off-track vibration.     

Dual track Wallace fly height measurement method to monitor slider motion in 2 dimension at near contact regime

Head media spacing of hard disk drive (HDD) is expected to continue its reduction in order to support areal density growth. At sub-nm clearance between the head and the disk, the intermittent head disk contact and interactions may happen. This does not only cause the fly height modulation but also induces the off-track motions as well. It is desirable to understand the characteristics of the 2D motions in the near contact regime, so as to enable further reduction of the clearance and to improve the reliability of HDD. This paper presents a method to measure instantaneous fly height (FH) motion and cross track motion concurrently by using read back signal from the dual data tracks written at different frequencies. The method is able to separate the FH motion and cross track motion of the head.     

自伺服刻写中磁头OTC性能研究

定量分析磁头在整个盘片上的磁道偏移能力对自伺服刻写中参考值的确定十分重要.本文分析影响磁头磁道偏移能力的因素,其中重点讨论弯曲角对边界擦除带的作用以及由此对磁头道偏移能力的影响.在实验部分提出一种新方法,通过这种方法可以获得磁头飞过整个磁盘表面的磁头写入宽度和读取宽度,磁头道偏移能力.实验数据表明随着弯曲度的变化边界擦除带对磁头磁道偏移能力影响较大,弯曲度还造成磁头内外径磁道偏移能力的不一致性.     

Experimental study on slider dynamics during touchdown by using thermal flying-height control

To investigate the possibility of further lowering the clearance in head?Cdisk interface systems, slider dynamic behavior during a touchdown sequence with a thermal flying-height control (TFC) function was investigated by using a spinstand-level evaluation utilizing an acoustic emission (AE) sensor and a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV). Experimental results demonstrated that off-track vibration was easier to excite by head?Cdisk contact at the beginning of head?Cdisk contact. We then confirmed that the amplitude of pitch-mode vibration in the flying-height direction increased and sway-mode vibration in the off-track direction decreased when increasing heater power during the touchdown sequence. Moreover, we found that the peak frequency of pitch-mode vibration shifted to a higher frequency under over-push conditions. Time?Cfrequency domain analysis results showed that the peak shift occurred at several locations during a disk rotation. The mechanism of the peak shift is attributed to the increase in stiffness at the head?Cdisk interface (HDI) due to solid?Csolid contact or mode change occurred in such regions. During the touchdown sequence, the friction force at the HDI continues to increase, even though slider vibration and AE signal decrease when heater power is increased. The friction force at the HDI needs to be decreased to achieve further low-clearance HDI.     

Piezoelectric film attached suspension for detecting disk flutter and reducing track misregistration

To increase the recording density of hard disk drives, high accuracy of head positioning is required. But disk flutter, which is airflow induced vibration, is a major contributor to head positioning error. For detecting disk flutter, we proposed a suspension to which a PVDF film sensor was attached, and built the suspension into an actual HDD. Comparing the power spectrum of disk vertical vibration with that of the PVDF film sensor output, disk flutter was well detected. We also implemented a feedforward controller and confirmed that the influence of disk flutter on position error signal is considerably suppressed.     

Tri-state dynamic model and adhesive effects on flying-height modulation for ultra-low flying head disk interfaces

Physical spacing between a flying slider and a rotating disk is projected to be 3 nm in order to achieve extremely high areal recording densities of 1 Tb/in². In such ultra-low flying-height regimes, two imminent obstacles that need to be overcome are intermittent head/disk contacts and strong intermolecular adhesive forces at the head/disk interface (HDI). Head/disk contact can cause large vibrations of the recording slider and possibly damage the disk and slider due to large contact forces. Strong adhesive forces disturb the balance of forces in a flying slider by pulling it down onto the disk and increasing the possibility of catastrophic HDI failures by doing so. This paper describes a dynamic model that includes contact and adhesive forces. Specifically, a lumped parameter single degree-of-freedom, three state nonlinear dynamic model representing the normal dynamics of the HDI and asperity-based contact and adhesive models were developed and coupled together to predict the performance of ultra-low flying sliders. The validity of the proposed dynamic model was confirmed in terms of flying-height modulation (FHM) by experimental measurements using ultra-low flying HDIs. It was found that the amplitude and frequency components of the dynamic microwaviness play an important role in slider dynamics. Furthermore, the effect of adhesive force on FHM was investigated and design guidelines for reduced FHM were suggested.This research was supported by a grant from the Information Storage Industry Consortium (INSIC) and the National Science Foundation under grant number CAREER CMS-0227842. Gary Prescott and Thomas Pitchford of Seagate Technology provided the spindle motor and HGA samples. The authors gratefully acknowledge this support.     

Prediction of position error signal of a hard disk drive undergoing a long seek

To expedite design cycles and to evaluate performance of designed hard disk drives, mathematical models to predict position error signal (PES) are needed. Existing mathematical model can successfully predict PES during track following. However, there is no computational efficiency approach to predict PES after a long seek presently. In this paper, we presents a feasible mathematical model to achieve this purpose. Detail mathematical derivations and numerical simulations are also included in this paper. Our mathematical models are capable to obtain reasonable qualitative predications after a long seek.