Abstract
Reducing windage, or flow-induced vibration of the head slider in the off track direction, is a very important issue in increasing the track density of hard disk drives (HDDs). We examine the characteristics of windage in this paper with the goal of enabling development of head gimbal assemblies (HGAs) with smaller windage. We used a 12-mm-long (from the swage hole center to the dimple) HGA in our study. An HGA was set between a rotating disk and a wall, and its windage was measured with a laser Doppler vibrometer. The results showed the windage amplitude correlated well with the mean airflow velocity. We concluded that reducing the air flow velocity is very useful in decreasing the windage amplitude.
