Optimum Design of Fluid Film Bearing for HDD Spindle Considering the Tolerances

Fluid film bearings are widely used for high speed rotating machineries acting as rotating shaft support element. Especially, the bearings are widely applied to the OA equipments and IT devices. Optimization of bearing parameters is effective to improve the performance of the fluid film bearings since low noise and impact-proof characteristics are essential requirements for these equipments. On the other hand, bearings for miniaturized spindles are generally made by mass production process which will eventually requires reduction of production costs. In this paper, therefore small size HDD spindle using fluid film bearings is treated. Sensitivity analysis and optimum design that considered dimensional tolerances using the probabilistic techniques are conducted. As a result, the influence of bearing characteristic values on the occurrence of dimensional tolerances was clarified.