Active Control on Flow-Induced Vibration of the Head Gimbals Assembly in Hard Disk Drives

A feedback active method is proposed to control the flow-induced vibration (FIV) of the head gimbals assembly (HGA) through suppressing the pressure fluctuations around the HGA. Firstly pressure fluctuations and FIV measurements are carried out around the HGA in a working hard disk drive, and the results show a high correlationship between the spectra of the HGA´s FIV and the pressure fluctuations. Secondly numerical simulations are conducted to investigate the control effect on the HGA´s FIV by the proposed feedback active method with a pressure virtual sensing architecture. The numerical results show that the HGA´s FIV can be successfully controlled through suppressing the pressure fluctuations with virtually sensing pressure in the wake zone of the HGA.