Simulation of Flow Field and Particle Trajectories in Hard Disk Drive Enclosures

The airflow field and particle trajectories inside hard disk drive (HDD) are investigated in this study using commercial software Fluent and Gambit. Three-dimensional grids inside the HDD configuration are built using Gambit taking into account all the components and their geometric details. The airflow field inside HDD is simulated using three incompressible Navier-Stokes equations for various disk rotational speeds. The effects of using the various turbulence models inside the Fluent software such as the standard k - ε , RNG k - ε and Reynolds Stress Method on the computed airflow characteristics are also assessed. Steady flow fields and the effects of rotational speeds are assessed. Based on the computed steady airflow patterns, particle trajectories are computed using routines available in Fluent as well as special particle trajectory functions defined by the user via the user-defined functions. Particles of different sizes and materials are injected at various locations in the computed flow field and the corresponding particle trajectories are studied. Based on the investigation, the trajectory tends to be different according to sizes and materials. The present work forms a basis for further investigation of heat transfer processes inside the HDD to address thermal management issues and also the computation of unsteady flow fields in the HDD due to the movement of the actuator arm during data storage and retrievalSingapore-MIT Alliance (SMA