Multi-Body Modeling Effects on the Head-Disk Interface During Operational Shocks in Hard Disk Drives

Over the past decade, there has been an increase in the demand of hard disk drives (HDD) used in portable devices. In such applications HDDs are often subjected to mechanical shocks. Hence it is important to study the stability of mobile drives during operational shocks (op-shock) in order to improve their shock performance. Former numerical investigations [1–3] used either detailed structure models and simplified air bearing models or vice versa to understand the HDI response during an opshock event. In 2012, Rai and Bogy [4] proposed a method in which both the HDD components and the air bearing were modeled in detail and were coupled with each other. However, in this model the head actuator assembly (HAA) was assumed to be amounted on a fixed support and hence the flexibility of the base plate and those effects on the HAA were neglected. In this study, we model the HAA as mounted on the base plate to investigate the effects of HDD components on the shock performance of mobile drives.