Effects of disk surface roughness on static flying characteristics of air bearing slider by using a combined method of Reynolds equation and rough disk surface

Abstract

Reynolds equation was modified with adding the surface roughness parameters to analyze the effects of disk surface roughness on the static flying characteristic of an air bearing slider. However, the modification demands the complicated mathematical expressions and related knowledge of physics and mathematics. In this paper, a combined method of Reynolds equation without introducing the roughness parameters and rough disk surface is proposed to investigate the effects of disk surface roughness on the static flying characteristics of an air bearing slider, it is different from those models of modified Reynolds equation introducing the disk surface roughness used by many researchers. More importantly, this method avoids the complicated numerical calculation resulted from the mathematical expressions including the Peklenik parameter $$\gamma$$ź and roughness Ra. By using an Ω air bearing slider, we investigated the effects of disk surface roughness on the static flying characteristics of this slider, the results show that the Peklenik parameter $$\gamma$$ź and roughness Ra have a significant influence on the pressure distribution, the load carrying capacity and the location of the pressure centre.