Air Bearing Flying Characteristics on Patterned Media

The air bearing steady-state flying characteristics on patterned media has been studied with a proprietary air bearing simulation code. Variation of minimum fly height with relative pattern-to-slider skew has been characterized at slider positions (ID, MD, OD). The results show that at the steady state minimum fly heights drop with introducing the pattern. Furthermore, the pattern-to-slider skew angle has a noticeable effect on the fly height drop, while the maximum fly height drop occurs on radial servo patterns.