Shock and head slap simulations of operational and nonoperational hard disk drives

A finite-element model of a hard disk drive (HDD) is developed to investigate the response of a HDD to linear and rotary shock impulses. The simulations are performed for both operational and nonoperational HDD models. The operational HDD model uses linear springs to represent the air bearing stiffness of the head-disk interface. The nonoperational HDD model has the magnetic head in the docked position at the inner diameter of the disk. The geometry is developed using a three-dimensional computer aided design (CAD) package and is then imported into a preprocessor. The transient solution is performed using a commercially available finite-element solver.