• Journal of Institute of Control, Robotics and Systems
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.153-163
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• 2004

The control objective in hard disk drives is to move head as fast as possible to target track and position the head over the center of target track in the presence of external disturbances. The external shock or disk clamping error in manufacturing process causes the disk center to deviate from the disk rotation center. The disk shift acts on the control system as disturbance and degrades severely the performance of disk drives. In this paper, we present a new controller that compensates for the periodic disturbances very fast. The disturbance compensator is arranged in parallel with the state feedback controller. To avoid the interference with the state feedback controller, the compensator creates compensation signal without the feedback of system output until steady state. The pulse type controller is included additionally for improving the transient performance due to initial state. Finally, in order to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed compensator. we present some experimental results using a commercially available disk drive.

• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.664-669
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• 2003

Recently, the recording density of hard disk drives has improved at an annual percentage rate of 100%. Therefore for faster access, higher disk rotational speeds will be required. The influence of the airflow produced by the rotation of a disk on the positioning accuracy has become a serious topic of research and the aerodynamic aspect of hard disk drives is now quite considerable with the increases in recording density and higher rotational speeds. Unsteady airflow in an actual hard disk drive is numerically simulated by using LES(Large Eddy Simulation) technique, we could predicted and aerodynamic mechanism that was related actuators' surroundings in HDD. At a result, with modifying the various shapes of the E-block and Damper, we estimated the characteristic of the influence of airflow in HDDs.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.18 no.3
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• pp.107-114
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• 2001

The durability of head/disk interface is an important issue for hard disk drives. Currently, there are several means of assessing the performance and integrity of the head/disk interface. In this work Track Average Amplitude(TAA) signal was used to analyzed the head/disk interface with respect to variations in disk velocity, slider pre-load and preformed scratch on the disk. Particularly, TAA variation due to disk defect in the form of a scratch was investigated.

• KSTLE International Journal
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.52-56
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• 2004

The hard disk drive performance depends strongly on air bearing characterisitcs of the head slider. The objective of the slider design is to provide accurate positioning of the magnetic read/write element at the very small height above the disk. Application of the numerical methods is required due to complexity of the air bearing surface of the slider. The Boundary-Fitted Coordinate System Divergence Formulation method can be used for calculation of pressure distribution in the case of steep film thickness gradients. In the present work, the interpolating functions used in the expression for the Couette flow are modified in order to improve the solution characteristics in the extremely high compressibility number region. The advantages of the modified method are demonstrated on example of the flat skewed slider. Finally, the modi.ed method is applied to analysis of the static characteristics of the femto-slider. The analysis results indicate the effect of the silder's air bearing surface crown on the flying height and the pitching angle in steady state position.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.24 no.5 s.176
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• pp.1183-1192
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• 2000

This paper relates to the flexural vibration analysis of the hard disk drive (HDD) spindle systems by means of the finite element method. In contrast to previous researches, every system componebt is here analytically modeled taking into account its flexibility and also the centrifugal effect particularly for the disk. To prove the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method, commercial HDD spindle systems with two and three identical disks are chosen as examples. Then, their major flexural natural modes are computed employing only a small number of element meshes as the shaft rotaional speed is varied, and compared with the bumerical or experimental results.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2001.05a
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• pp.917-923
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• 2001

This paper presents the fabrication and testing results of a dual stage microactuator system for fine positioning of magnetic heads in hard disk drives. An electrostatic rotary microactuator was newly designed and fabricated. The microactuator was integrated into the head gimbal assembly of a disk drive system and its dynamic characteristics were investigated. Experimental results show that natural frequency and voltage gain of the microactuator are 4.3 KHz and 25 nm/V and the dual stage microactuator system achieves the tracking accuracy of 30 nm.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Precision Engineering Conference
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• 1996.11a
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• pp.419-424
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• 1996

As track density increases, the effects of nonlinearity in pivot bearing of hard disk drive on the servo performance are becoming more important in considering the range of inertia force and the input torque during settling and tracking mode. Recently, an increasing attention is given to more precise experimental observations and modelings of pivot nonlinearity for achieving higher performance of servo control. In this paper, we propose a new model that shows an improved prediction of the pivot nonlinearity than existing preload-plus-two-slope model at matching simulations and experimental results in both time and frequency domains. Experimental measurements are carried out to validate and identify the specific nonlinearity presents in the pivot bearing when its in fine motion. Using the experimental results new model along with the existing one are characterized and compared for relevancies.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2001.11b
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• pp.579-585
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• 2001

This paper proposed a method of reducing a noise in hard disk drive. This method is performed through three parts of procedures. First procedure is sound-oriented experiment, which contains sound intensity techniques and measurements of sound pressure level and sound power. Second is vibration-oriented experiment, which contains FRF(Frequency Response Function) analysis and disk vibration reduction techniques. And the third is computer-oriented simulation, which contains modal analysis and force vibration analysis using ANSYS and sound radiation prediction using SYSNOISE. As these three parts can affect with each other, they should be considered and conducted simultaneously. Through this procedure sound power is measured 2.7 Bels in idle-spinning mode, which is the lowest noise level in the HDD industries.

• Tribology and Lubricants
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.335-342
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• 1999

Corrosion of the disk has been an ongoing concern for the manufacturers of hard disk drives. With the advent of magnetoresistive (MR) head, very low levels of corrosion and contamination become more critical since the raised defects and corrosion products on the disk surface-anything that heats the MR sensor due to the contact-can distort the output signal of the head. This phenomenon is called as thermal asperity. In this paper, the effect of corrosion as a form of Co migration on the occurrence of thermal asperity in MR drives was investigated. The corrosion test at high temperature (60$^{\circ}C$) and high relative humidity (80%) was emphasized in this study and the testing results at ambient condition were compared. The corrosion on the disks was characterized as the amount of Co ion migration using an ion chromatography (IC) and a time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy (TOF-SIMS). It is proved that corrosion on the disk surface after storage testing is closely correlated to the amount of Co ions migration from the magnetic layer to disk surfaces and higher Co migration causes more thermal asperities in the drive. In order to reduce Co migration, several methods such as burnishing process and structure of the carbon overcoat were investigated. It is found that the hydrogenated carbon overcoat shows the least Co migration among different types of overcoat layer. However, the most effective way to reduce Co migration is the application of Cr layer between the overcoat and the magnetic alloy layer.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Noise and Vibration Engineering Conference
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• 2002.11b
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• pp.363-368
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• 2002

A practical implementation method of squeeze-film aeroelastic disk vibration damping and its practical design performance are presented to provide a solution method to meet the tight TMR(Track Mis-Registration) design budget of high-TPI HDDs. Most previous research results are mainly based on the component-level study in the 'open-cover state' which is far from the realistic operation HDD condition. In this study, the squeeze-film disk damping effect is widely investigated under the realistic drive-level condition of 'enclosed-cover state.' It is found that the proper aeroelastic gap(s) between disk(s) and adjacent surface(s) to give significant vibration reduction in the enclosed HDD operating conditions can be achieved not only by classical well-known squeeze-film damping gaps such as very small 0.0x-millimeter level gaps which are not practically implementable in mass-production HDDs, but also by a few 0.x millimeter which is possible for designing realistic HDD design. The various experimental results including drive-level PES are also presented to prove feasibility of the optimal disk damper design for 93kTPI HDDs.