• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.102-108
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• 2003

The height of laser bumps has been considered as the limit of the minimum flying height in the contact start-stop (CSS) of hard disk drives. In this paper, tribological interactions at flying height under laser bumps are investigated in a spin stand for development of ultra-low flying head-disk interface. With the reduction of the spinning speed in a spin stand, the flying height is decreased under the height of laser bumps and, then, head-disk interactions are investigated using AE and stiction/friction signals. During seek tests and 20000 cycle-sweep tests, AE and stiction/friction signals are not significantly changed and there are no catastrophic failures of head-disk interface. Bearing analysis and AFM analysis show that there are signs of wear and plastic deformation on the disks. It is suggested that flying height could be as low as and, sometimes, lower than laser bump height.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.247-252
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• 2000

As the demand for higher areal recording densities requires a lower flying height of the slider, the variation of the flying height of the slider during drive operation becomes of great concern. The variation of the flying height is closely related with the slider design parameters such as air bearing shape, cavity depth, shallow step depth, crown, camber, pitch offset, roll offset, gram load, and so on. The objective of this work is to optimize the cavity depth and the shallow step depth, which are the control factors in air bearing design, using Robust Design method. It was found that the shallow step depth was statistically significant in affecting the variation of flying height, therefore the level of the shallow step depth should be chosen to minimize the variation of flying height.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2002.10b
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• pp.275-276
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• 2002

Active-head sliders with a unimorph piezoelectric actuator for flying height control were experimentally evaluated. It was found that the normalized stroke of the actuator is 5.2 to 6 nm/V/mm without flying over the disk. However, the normalized adjustment range of flying height is about 1.6 nm/V/mm when the active-head slider is flying over the disk. This value is smaller than the measured value when the slider is not flying, because of the air pressure generated at the active pad when the pad approaches the disk surface.

• KSTLE International Journal
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.114-118
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• 2002

In this work, head-disk interactions are studied when flying height becomes lower than laser bump height on the landing zone of a disk. With the reduction of the spinning speed in a spin stand, the flying height is decreased under the height of laser bumps. Conventional and padded pico sliders sweep between landing Bone and data zone and, then, the dynamic behavior of the pico sliders and head-disk impacts are investigated using AE and stiction/friction signals. After 200n cycle-sweep tests, bearing analysis and AFM analysis indicate that there are some signs of wear and plastic deformation in the landing zone of a disk, although AE and stiction/friction signals are not significantly changed during the sweep tests. The experimental results of this paper suggest that in CSS tests at component level, more rigorous examination methods of wear and plastic deformation might be necessary as flying height becomes getting lower.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1886-1896
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• 1991

This paper presents a method to predict the flying height of the head slider in a hard disk drive. Quantitative predicts of the flying height according to the variations of the external load and the disk velocity have been done by numerical computation. In addition, the magnitude of the external load to keep flying height constant were also suggested. The Modified Reynolds' equation driven from hydrodynamic lubrication theory under slip flow condition was used to describe air-bearing system under the slider. To solve the equation, a Finite Volume Method (FVM) has been applied. To determine the final minimum flying height and pitch angle of the head slider, the Secant iteration method is used which update initial guess of the minimum flying height and pitch angle of the slider. In this study, the model head slider has been selected from a real hard disk drive which is equipped in many commercial personal computers. As a result, as the disk velocity increases at constant external load, the minimum flying height and the pitch angle increase due to the in crease of the air-bearing force at the bottom of slider.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.05a
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• pp.160-165
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• 2002

The flying height of contact slider is determined by vertical and pitching motions. This paper performed the computer simulation for flying height change of contact slider. It is changed by many parameters, contact stiffness. contact damping, all bearing stiffness ratio and so on. So computer simulation analysis is performed for knowing for what change of these parameters influences in flying height of contact slider. The practical recording zone surface is gotten by using SPM. In recording zone, flying height is simulated for each parameter. the settling time which the flying height of contact slider is lower than 10nm is analyzed over practical disk surface for changing each parameter. Through these results, the contact slider can be analyzed for more accuracy dynamic characteristics.

• Transactions of the Society of Information Storage Systems
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.67-72
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• 2005

This study proposes a design methodology to determine the optimum configurations of the optical flying head (OFH) for near-field recording systems. Since the OFH requires stricter static and dynamic characteristics of slider air-bearings within an optical tilt tolerance over the entire recording band, an optimum design to keep the focusing and tracking ability stable is essential. The desired flying characteristics considered in this study are to minimize the variation in flying height between the SIL and the disk from a target value, satisfying the restriction of the minimum flying height, to keep the pitch and roll angles within an optical tilt tolerance, and to ensure a higher air-bearing stiffness. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed design methodology by showing that the static and dynamic flying characteristics of the optimally designed OFH are enhanced in comparison with those of the initial. The gap between the SIL and the disk can be kept at less than 100 nm even if the optical tilt tolerance of the SIL is considered.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2003.05a
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• pp.1165-1169
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• 2003

This paper presents an approach to optimally design the air-bearing surface (ABS) of the optical flying head for near-field recording technology (NFR). NFR is an optical recording technology using very small beam spot size by overcoming the limit of beam diffraction. One of the most Important problems in NFR is a head disk interface (HDI) issue over the recording band during the operation. A multi-criteria optimization problem is formulated to enhance the flying performances over the entire recording band during the steady state. The optimal solution of the slider, whose target flying height is 50 nm, is automatically obtained. The flying height during the steady state operation becomes closer to the target values than those fur the initial one. The pitch and roll angles are also kept within suitable ranges over the recording band. Especially, all of the air-bearing stiffness are drastically increased by the optimized geometry of the air bearing surface.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers Conference
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• 2001.06a
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• pp.122-126
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• 2001

Magnetic hard disk drive is continually being pushed to reduce head-disk spacing for higher recording densities. The current minimum spacing between the air-bearing slider and disk has been reduced to under 15 nm. In this work, it was investigated if flying height could be lowered under the height of laser bumps. With the reduction of the spinning speed, the flying height was decreased under the height of laser bumps. When a head swept between landing zone and data zone, the head-disk impact was monitored using AE and friction signals. It is demonstrated that magnetic hard disk drive could be operated without tribological failures under the height of laser bumps.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 2000.11a
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• pp.926-929
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• 2000

As the track density of hard disk drives increases, there is a need for more precise actuation of the head. This can be accomplished by using a high band width micro-actuator. In this work, the flying characteristics of sliders with micro-actuators are investigated with the aim to optimize the head/disk interface performance of such sliders. Contact-start-stop, sweep, and flying height tests are performed and analyzed. The results show that the MEMS based micro-actuator mounted on a slider possess acceptable flying characteristics.