Optimal Design of HDD Air-Lubricated Slider Bearings for Improving Dynamic Characteristics and Operating Performance

Flying attitudes of the slider, which are flying height, pitch, and roll, are affected by air-flow velocity, skew angle, and manufacturing tolerances. In the traditional design process of air-bearing surfaces, we have considered only the steady state flying attitude over the recording band. To reduce the flying height variation during track seek as well as in steady state, we design a new shape for air-bearing surfaces. An optimization technique is used to improve the dynamic characteristics and operating performance of the new air-bearing surface shapes. The quasistatic approach is used in the numerical simulation of the track seek operation because the skew angle effect dominates the inertial effect even at high seek velocities. The perturbation method is applied to the lubrication equation to obtain the air-bearing stiffness. We employ the method of modified feasible directions and use the weighting method to solve the multicriteria optimization problem. The optimally designed sliders show enhanced flying and dynamic characteristics. The steady state flying heights are closer to the target values and the flying height variations during track seek operation are smaller than those for the original ones. The pitch and roll angles are kept within suitable ranges over the recording band during track seek operation as well as in steady state. The air-bearing stiffnesses of the optimally designed sliders are larger than those of the original ones.