Tribology of contacting head-disk interfaces Academic Article uri icon

abstract

  • An experimental study is presented on the tribological performance and reliability of head-disk contacting interfaces. Standard negative pressure, tri-pad pico sliders and several media with different roughness were used. On-track flyability experiments under interference contact conditions were carried out on the various interfaces selected for evaluation. In all cases a rotational speed of 10,000 RPM was used. Ambient pressure reduction was the means chosen to decrease head-disk spacing (i.e., the flying height) until head-disk contact occurred. It was found that conventional head-disk combinations, which are typically super-smooth, couldn't survive continuous contact conditions. A slider design concept involving the micro texturing of air bearing surfaces is presented. This novel design could lead to the effective mitigation of the adverse effects of head-disk contact on the durability of contacting head-disk interfaces.

published proceedings

  • American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Tribology Division, TRIB

author list (cited authors)

  • Hanchi, J., Polycarpou, A. A., & Boutaghou, Z.

complete list of authors

  • Hanchi, J||Polycarpou, AA||Boutaghou, Z

publication date

  • December 1999