Optimization of Air Bearing Slider Design

Hard disk drives continue to increase the data storage density. The parameters of the head slider flying attitude must satisfy very strict performance goals. This paper focuses on the topic of the simulated annealing algorithm when it is applied to the problem of slider air bearing design in hard disk drives. The objective is to minimize the static flying height, to keep the pitch angle within a reasonable range, and to minimize the roll angle. The design variables include recess depth and geometry configuration of the slider air bearing surface. A typical tri-pad slider was taken as the physical model to demonstrate the validity of the optimal algorithm. Results show that simulated annealing is efficient for the optimization of the slider air bearing design. The static air bearing characteristics were enhanced significantly.