Modeling, Simulation and Analyses of Harddisk Drive Mechanics Submitted by

Summary Hard-disk Drive’s (HDD) were invented as a form of portable storage to be used in various forms of electrical devices ranging from personal music players to laptops. Being portable, HDD’s have to be shock resistant and resilient to vibration as those were its factors of failure. A HDD fails when it encounters a head slap; contact between the slider and the disk-platter resulting in damage to either component. It is unlikely that a direct head slap occurs when a magnitude of shock is large enough. A head slap usually happens when a sufficiently large shock causes separation at the dimple point, affecting the balance between the forces of the preload and the air-bearing interface leading to an eventual head slap. When the Hitachi 1.8 ” HDD was tested against the designed shock of 500G at 2ms pulse-width, no separation was detected at the dimple point hence it was highly unlikely that a head slap occured. Testing with an increased magnitude of shock was done and the HDD eventually failed at 1000G, this being used as the benchmark of the HDD’s limit. A parametric study was then performed by changing the loadbeam’s material property to prevent failure at a shock of 1000G. The larger the decrease in the loadbeam’s density, the more resistant the HDD was to separation at its dimple point as well as a head slap. A reduction of 50 % percent was sufficient to prevent the HDD from failure at 1000G at a 2ms pulse width. ii/