Analysis of the slider off-track vibration caused by the aerodynamic loads associated with different components of a head stack assembly in a disk drive

The paper describes a numerical investigation of the problem of flow-induced, off-track vibration of the slider in a disk drive. The flow field was simulated in a 3.5-in, 10 000 rpm disk drive using FLUENT flow-modeling software, which yielded the aerodynamic forces and moments for various components of the head stack assembly (HSA). The finite-element model of the HSA was developed using ANSYS software. Then off-track vibration of the slider caused by the aerodynamic loads of different HSA components was computed. The computations showed that the arm experiences the largest fluctuations of aerodynamic load. However, the loadbeam base region appears to make the largest contribution to off-track vibration of the slider, due to the vortex shedding generated by the side tabs of the loadbeam base region.