Characteristics of Miniaturized Air-Bearing Flying over Discrete Track Medium

Abstract

We have developed a simulation method in which grooves are virtually distributed on a slider air-bearing surface instead of on a grooved medium surface and used it to investigate slider flying performance. The characteristics of miniaturized air-bearing flying over a discrete track medium (DTM) with a sufficiently small mesh size are simulated minutely. The simulation results indicated that the air-bearing characteristics do not abruptly change when the DTM's land and groove sizes change from below to above the air mean free path. The “brush” shaped pressure distribution causes a larger shear stress difference between the DTM land and groove, which possibly leads to bigger lube moguls or ripples, and the shear stress on DTM land may make lube move into the groove from the land.