Abstract
The shape of the trailing or leading edge of an E-block arm was modified from a blunt shape to a fin or round shape. The airflow around the arm tip was measured for the different arm edge shapes using a hot-wire anemometer, and the off-track vibration of the slider was measured using a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDBV). In the airflow measurements a peak around 4 kHz was found in the power spectra of the flow fluctuation for all arm shapes. The lowest magnitude of this peak was observed for the round type. The round trailing edge type resulted in a 10% reduction in the RMS amplitude of slider off-track vibration in the 2-20 kHz frequency band as compared with the reference arm.
