Elastic/Plastic Contact Mechanics-Based Analysis of Hard Disk Drive Media Damage From Slider Corner Impacts

A contact mechanics-based elastic-plastic impact model which considers slider corner – head disk interaction has been proposed. This model estimates the impact contact parameters accounting for the plastic deformation effects of the realistic thin-film disk media. These properties were utilized for the elastic-plastic impact model to estimate the contact parameters. Very high impact velocities and/or small slider corner radii resulted is extremely high contact depths where the disk substrate mostly dominated the impact and the effect of layers could not be seen. At lower impact velocities and higher corner radii, the impact damage was relatively smaller. The effect of the thin-film layers, which are stiffer than the substrate, was clearly observed.