On the quasi-rigid body motion of the head actuator assembly in hard disk drives

Abstract

A quasi-rigid (QR) vibration mode between 3 and 5 kHz is common in current hard disk drives (HDDs), which hinders servo bandwidth improvement and thus limits growth in the areal density (numbers of bits that can be stored per unit area) of HDDs. In this paper, a finite element (FE) model of a head actuator assembly (HAA) is developed and an experimental set-up is established to study the quasi-rigid body mode. The FE model result is compared with the experimental data. It is found that the quasi-rigid body mode is in fact a butterfly-like mode, which integrates the flexibility of the pivot assembly as well as the flexibility and the mass of the whole head actuator body.