Advanced air-bearing modeling for operational shock analysis of a 2.5-inch HDD with ramp–disk contact

With the rapid adoption of mobile computing devices, it is important to analyze and predict the anti-shock performance of hard disk drive (HDD) systems accurately. This paper proposes an advanced air-bearing surface (ABS) model for analyzing the operational shock performance of a 2.5-inch HDD system, including the ramp–disk contact behavior. First, we developed a decoupled simulation method using four linear air-bearing springs using the finite element method and the Lagrange multiplier algorithm for modeling contact between the disk and ramp. With the finite element model, the effect of the linear air-bearing stiffness was investigated. We found that the air-bearing spring model affects the behavior of the slider in the HDD system with ramp–disk contact during the operational shock. Based on the numerical results, an advanced ABS model that reflects air-bearing characteristics and considers the natural frequencies and nodal lines of the ABS pitch and roll modes was proposed and evaluated.