Experimental and theoretical studies of PZT glide head vibration

This paper studies the natural frequencies of a PZT glide head through calibrated experiments and a finite element analysis (FEA). In the experimental studies, the PZT served as an actuator exciting the glide head from 100 kHz to 1.3 MHz, and a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) measured the displacement of the glide head at the inner or outer rail. The natural frequencies were measured through PZT impedance and frequency response functions of PZT to LDV. In FEA, the slider, PZT, and glue (epoxy) were meshed by brick elements. Natural frequencies predicted from FEA agree well with the experimental results with a 5% difference. Therefore, modeling of the epoxy layer is critical in predicting the natural frequencies of PZT glide heads.