Monte Carlo simulations of air shielding effect on lubricant transfer at the head disk interface

Abstract

The lubricant transfer at the head disk interface of hard disk drives was investigated by the direct simulation Monte Carlo method. It was found that the air molecules between the disk and the slider have an effect of shielding the slider surface, preventing the evaporated lubricant molecules from reaching it. We propose a model that well describes the shielding effect and show that the shielding effect has distinct characteristics depending on the Knudsen number.