Analysis of flow-induced vibration of a magnetic head actuator with a linear protrusion structure

Abstract

Because hard-disks rotate at high rotational speed inside hard-disk drives, air flow causes flow-induced vibration to of carriage, which causes a head-positioning error. Therefore, it is necessary to suppress the flow-induced vibration to improve the positioning error. In a previous study, it is reported that a linear protrusion structure put on the leading edge of the carriage arm was improved by approximately 10%. However, its mechanism is unknown. In this study, we considered the effect of the linear protrusion on a disturbance torque of the carriage using Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT).