Investigations of the influence of the laser texture design in the hard disk landing zone on the dynamic characteristics of Pico slider during contact take-off

Abstract

A good laser texture design in hard disk landing zone can significantly reduce the slider-disk contact force, contact time and contact frequency during a slider's contact start and stop process. In this paper a numerical investigation was conducted on the effects of laser texture properties, disk topography and slider design on the dynamic characteristics of a Pico slider during its take-off in the landing zone. Factors considered in this study are bump height, bump diameter, bump density, slider crown, spin acceleration, and waviness. The slider contact take-off process was simulated with various values of those factors, and the results were analyzed through comparing the contact frequency, contact force, contact time, and take-off speed. The simulation results show that a regular take-off is not a continuous contact process, but composed of periodical contact bursts, and the time duration of each group of contact bursts is about the same. It has been found that some of the laser texture properties can significantly influence the slider's take-off characteristics. Properly choosing laser texture design parameters can reduce the impacts between slider and bumps during the take-off process.