Abstract
The fundamental fluid mechanics associated with the rotation of a smooth plane disk enclosed within a cylindrical chamber have been studied experimentally. In order to acquire systematic information pertinent to this problem torque and friction loss data were obtained over a wide range of disk Reynolds numbers for axial clearance-disk radius ratio H/R from 0.025 to 0.2 and radial tip gap-disk radius ratio s/R from 0.021 to 0.105. Loss analysis of hard disk drive (HDD) is presented to describe the contribution of windage loss of a rotating disk. The minimum loss form factor of HDD can be obtained from this analysis at each operation conditions.
