Effect of Spinning Disk–Parking Ramp Collison on the Operational Shock Performance of a Mobile Hard Disk Drive

Abstract

With the introduction of netbook computers two years ago, the demand for hard disk drives (HDD) for mobile applications has greatly increased. High shock resistance is an important requirement for the reliable performance of HDDs in such applications. In this paper we conduct a numerical investigation to understand the failure mechanism of the head disk interface (HDI) during an operational shock. Simulation results suggest that the excitation frequency spectrum has a strong influence on HDI failure. We also investigate the effect of the parking or load unload (LUL) ramp on shock resistance using a new spinning disk model. The results suggest that asymmetric excitations induced by ramp-disk collision causes failure of the HDI at lower shock magnitudes. This study can be helpful in improving the design of HDD components and air bearing sliders (ABS) for better shock performance.