Abstract
The dynamics and stability of a thermal fly-height control (TFC) head slider at close proximity to and touchdown on a magnetic recording disk are attracting considerable research attention, because it is necessary to reduce the head clearance from the lubricant surface to 0.5 nm or less to achieve a higher recording density. This study is intended to develop a simulation algorithm for actual touchdown (TD) and take-off (TO) process by continuously increasing and decreasing head protrusion by TFC power. From numerical simulation, it is found that the simulated TD and TO process show the behaviors similar to the experimental ones except minor differences. The spacing variations during TD and TO process are almost symmetrical as the actual cases. The temporal spacing variations at the transient from light contact to flying state are obtained sometimes in simulation in contrast to experimental results. The strong P2 mode vibration at heavy contact state observed only in experiment is considered to be caused by a self-excited mechanism.
