Abstract
High-speed impacts of magnetic recording heads with small asperity defects on disk surfaces have long been a major source for reliability failures for disk drives. Consequently, determining the contacting stresses and flash temperatures that occur during these impacts is an important step toward understanding the wear and eventual failure mechanisms associated with these impacts. Here we report measurements and modeling of the flash temperatures that occur when a magnetic recording head impacts an asperity at disk-drive-like conditions (at speeds 9–15 m/s and with a few nanometers of interference). The asperities considered here have a well-defined shape with radii of curvature at their summits = 100–200 µm. One surprising result of our measurements is that the flash temperature does not increase monotonically with increasing interference, which would be expected if the flash temperature is solely from frictional heating. To explain this result, we have developed an analytical model where, in addition to frictional heating, we include the effect of contact cooling through the contact zone of the heat generated by the thermal contact sensor and the heater used for clearance control. From this modeling, we are able to estimate that fairly high coefficients of friction (µ = 0.8–3.9) occur between the magnetic recording heads and these types of asperities. These results provide not only precise understanding of the flash temperatures generated by high-speed impacts with asperities, but also insight into the contact stresses and potential wear mechanisms that occur during these contacts.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Marchon, B., Pitchford, T., Hsia, Y.T., Gangopadhyay, S.: The head-disk interface roadmap to an areal density of 4 Tbit/in2. Adv. Tribol. 2013 (2013). doi:10.1155/2013/521086
Mate, C.M., Dai, Q., Payne, R.N., Knigge, B.E., Baumgart, P.: Will the numbers add up for sub-7-nm magnetic spacings? Future metrology issues for disk drive lubricants, overcoats, and topographies. IEEE Trans. Magn. 41(2), 626–631 (2005)
Tam, A.C., Brannon, J., Baumgart, P., Pour, I.K.: Laser texturing of glass disk substrates. IEEE Trans. Magn. 33(5), 3181–3183 (1997)
Shiramatsu, T., Kurita, M., Miyake, K., Suk, M., Ohki, S., Tanaka, H., Saegusa, S.: Drive integration of active flying-height control slider with micro thermal actuator. IEEE Trans. Magn. 42(10), 2513–2515 (2006)
Juang, J.Y., Nakamura, T., Knigge, B., Luo, Y.S., Hsiao, W.C., Kuroki, K., Huang, F.Y., Baumgart, P.: Numerical and experimental analyses of nanometer-scale flying height control of magnetic head with heating element. IEEE Trans. Magn. 44(11), 3679–3682 (2008)
Shimizu, Y., Xu, J.G., Kohira, H., Kurita, M., Shiramatsu, T., Furukawa, M.: Nano-scale defect mapping on a magnetic disk surface using a contact sensor. IEEE Trans. Magn. 47(10), 3426–3432 (2011)
Li, J., Xu, J., Liu, J., Kohira, H.: Thermal mechanics of a contact sensor used in hard disk drives. Microsyst. Technol. 19(9–10), 1607–1614 (2013)
Xu, J., Shimizu, Y., Furukawa, M., Li, J., Sano, Y., Shiramatsu, T., Aoki, Y., Matsumoto, H., Kuroki, K., Kohira, H.: Contact/Clearance sensor for HDI subnanometer regime. IEEE Trans. Magn. 50(3), 114–118 (2014)
Archard, J.: The temperature of rubbing surfaces. Wear 2(6), 438–455 (1959)
Yu, N., Polycarpou, A.A., Hanchi, J.V.: Thermomechanical finite element analysis of slider-disk impact in magnetic storage thin film disks. Tribol. Int. 43(4), 737–745 (2010)
Ashby, M.F., Abulawi, J., Kong, H.S.: Temperature maps for frictional heating in dry sliding. Tribol. Trans. 34(4), 577–587 (1991). doi:10.1080/10402009108982074
Lee, S., Yeo, C.D., Purani, D., Kim, A.S.: Thermomechanical contact between magnetic recording head and disk defect accounting for heat partition factor. IEEE Trans. Magn. 50(3), 119–125 (2014)
Bansal, D.G., Streator, J.L.: A method for obtaining the temperature distribution at the interface of sliding bodies. Wear 266(7), 721–732 (2009)
Hertz, H.: On the contact of elastic solids. J. Reine. Angew. Math. 92, 156–171 (1882)
Johnson, K.L.: Contact mechanics. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (1985)
Mate, C.M., Payne, R.N., Dai, Q., Ono, K.: Nanoscale origins of dynamic friction in an asymmetric contact geometry. Phys. Rev. Lett. 97(21), 216104 (2006)
Sackfield, A., Hills, D.A.: Some useful results in the tangentially loaded Hertz contact problem. J. Strain Anal. Eng. Des. 18(2), 107–110 (1983)
Hamilton, G.M.: Explicit equations for the stresses beneath a sliding spherical contact. Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng. 197, 53–59 (1983)
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Netsanet Haile for help with AFM imaging, H. Matsumoto for facilitating the laser texturing of the disks and Toshiki Hirano for valuable discussions.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Mate, C.M., Deng, H., Lo, GJ. et al. Measuring and Modeling Flash Temperatures at Magnetic Recording Head–Disk Interfaces for Well-Defined Asperity Contacts. Tribol Lett 58, 27 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-015-0505-6
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11249-015-0505-6