Numerical Simulations of the Head-Disk Interface in Hard Disk Drives

This monograph is based on the Doctoral thesis of the
author at the University of California, Berkeley
(2008). Over the past few years, hard disk drives
(HDD) have become viable for many consumer products
that require large storage capacities. These
applications subject the HDD to adverse conditions
wherein the reliability and performance of the drive
becomes critical. This book presents a Finite Element
based simulation methodology which is used to study
dynamic events such as load/unload and shock of the HDD.
The dynamics of the HDI are governed by the
structural components of the HDD as well as the
air-bearing which is formed between the spinning disk
and the flying head. A new numerical scheme is
presented to solve the resulting nonlinear coupled
set of equations using stabilized finite elements,
first for the steady state case and then for the time
dependent case. Meshing/refinement strategies are
explored in order to obtain accurate results with as
few degrees of freedom as possible. Finally the
methodology is applied to simulate the shock and
load/unload processes in HDDs and carry out
parametric studies on the performance of a 1" HDD.

Autorentext

Puneet Bhargava received his Doctoral and Masters degrees inMechanical Engineering from the University of California atBerkeley. During his graduate studies he worked at the ComputerMechanics Lab under the guidance of Prof. David Bogy. Hecurrently works as a Staff Scientist at Hitachi Global StorageTechnologies in San Jose, California.

Klappentext

This monograph is based on the Doctoral thesis of theauthor at the University of California, Berkeley(2008). Over the past few years, hard disk drives(HDD) have become viable for many consumer productsthat require large storage capacities. Theseapplications subject the HDD to adverse conditionswherein the reliability and performance of the drivebecomes critical. This book presents a Finite Elementbased simulation methodology which is used to studydynamic events such as load/unload and shock of the HDD.The dynamics of the HDI are governed by thestructural components of the HDD as well as theair-bearing which is formed between the spinning diskand the flying head. A new numerical scheme ispresented to solve the resulting nonlinear coupledset of equations using stabilized finite elements,first for the steady state case and then for the timedependent case. Meshing/refinement strategies areexplored in order to obtain accurate results with asfew degrees of freedom as possible. Finally themethodology is applied to simulate the shock andload/unload processes in HDDs and carry outparametric studies on the performance of a 1" HDD.