Numerical studies of thermal flying height control slider in hard disk drive

Abstract

As thermal flying height control (TFC) slider has been widely used in today's hard disk drive (HDD) industry for its advantages of easier control of flying height (FH) and less risk of contacts with the disk over conventional slider. The concept of a TFC slider is to use a heater embedded near the read/write element. When a current is applied through the heater, the pole-tip protrusion caused by the mismatch of thermal expansion of various materials occurs and reduces the slider-disk spacing accordingly. Test, analysis and design of the air bearing slider with thermal protrusion are essential for both research and development work, and industrial products.

In this report, a series of numerical simulations is done to gain an insightful knowledge on the heater designs of the thermal actuated sliders and their effects on the protrusion profiles, temperature and distribution and flying height reduction by using the commercial software ANSYS and DSI self-developed simulation code ABSolution respectively.