Calculating Air Bearing Pressure and Flying Height in a Humid Environment

This paper proposes a model describing the adjustment of air bearing pressure in a humid environment. It is shown that the FH of a slider is strongly dependent on the partial pressure of water present in a hard disk drive. The FH loss induced by the humidity effect are calculated by introducing the adjusted pressure into the air bearing model. The model output is found to agree with the changes in fly height measured by experiment. Finally, the model is applied to analyze the FH sensitivity to temperature changes in a humid condition