Measurement of shock response of hard disk drive head using laser doppler vibrometer and strain meter

Hard disk drives (HDDs) are the most dominant form of data storage in the consumer market due to its high data transfer rate and reliability. However, HDDs are made up of electromechanical and magnetic parts which may be damaged due to physical shock. Hence, in order to understand how to improve the reliability of the HDDs, it is important to understand the vibration characteristics of the HDD components. The focus for this project would be to study the shock response of the HDD read/write head using a Laser Doppler Vibrometer and Strain Gauge.In this study, the output hard disk head displacement and strain are measured as a result of an input sinusoidal force. Mathematical functions would be formulated from the experimental results in the form of frequency response functions for both methods. These functions would used to determine a calibration factor to predict the values of head displacement given the head strain.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering