Design and analysis of a passive damping device in a head actuator assembly

L. M. Xu, S. Zeng, N. Guo, R. M. Lin, H. Du

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4 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

It is known that a quasi-rigid-body mode (QR mode) exists in hard disk drives (HDDs) in the frequency range from 3 to 5 kHz and that it is caused by the flexibility of the pivot and the mass and structure of the head actuator assembly (HAA). This mode hinders performance improvement of the servo system in this bandwidth and thus limits the area density growth of HDDs. In this paper, a novel tuned damping device is proposed to suppress the QR mode and to reduce the residual vibration in head positioning in order to improve the servo system performance. The damping device is to be installed on the arm and hollow space within the voice coil motor (VCM) on the HDDs. The dynamic characteristics of the HAA with the tuned damping device are measured in both the frequency and the time domain and are analysed by finite element modelling (FEM). It is shown that the tuned damping device can work effectively to suppress quasi-rigid body vibration of the HAA and minimize the residual vibration in head positioning.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)353-366
Number of pages14
JournalProceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers Part C: Journal of Mechanical Engineering Science
Volume216
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2002
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Damping
  • Hard disk drives
  • Head actuator assembly
  • Quasi-rigid-body mode
  • Vibration

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