High air-bearing stiffness slider design

Abstract

This paper discusses the approach to design air bearing surface (ABS), which can achieve high air bearing (AB) stiffness and high air pressure (AP). Generally, in order to reduce flying height variation and improve the slider's flying stability, high AB stiffness and high AP are preferred. AB stiffness and AP is very sensitive to the slider's ABS design. The flying height and flying attitude of slider is realized by ABS design. According to our study, flying stability of slider is also affected by ABS design. The slider has higher AB stiffness and higher air pressure; it is going to fly more stable. [E.M. Jayson, J. Murphy, P.W. Smith, F.E. Talke. J. Tribol. 125 (2003) 343; W.C. Choi, Y.H. Shin, J.H. Choi. JSME Int. J. 44 (2001) 470.] In order to increase highly the AB stiffness and AP, a dual shallow step structure in a slider is explored. It proved that the dual shallow step structure-increases the air bearing stiffness and the AP on the head area significantly. The structure of central trailing pad is found to have much higher influences on the AB stiffness and AP than the other pads. Optimizing the structure of central trailing pad in the dual shallow step structure slider can further increase the AB stiffness and AP. Finally, the optimized dual shallow step structure slider has much higher AB stiffness and much greater AP on the head area than the normal single shallow step slider. Therefore, the flying stability of the slider with optimized dual shallow step structure should be better.