Flow excitation and damping forces on disk flutter in hard disk drives

This paper investigates mechanisms of flow excitation and damping force by air on rotating disks in hard disk drives and how to reduce disk flutter. Computational fluid dynamics simulate the disk flutter vibration and clarify its mechanism. The damping force by narrow disk-to-shroud gap has been theorized and reduction of disk flutter by a biased shroud is proposed as an application of the shroud damping effect.