A study of shock-resistance design of suspension subjected to impulsive excitation

The transient response of head/disk interface in a non-operating hard disk drive is investigated theoretically, subjected to a half-sine shock pulse in the axial directions. The equations of motion are driven by Hamilton's principle. To get the solution, the assumed mode approximation is used and then the Galerkin method is applied. Numerical results are obtained using the Runge-Kutta method. The purpose of this analytical model is to try to quantitatively describe the dynamics of the head/disk system. The results are in good agreement with those of FE simulations and experiments. It is found that the head slap is caused not by disk shock response but by suspension dynamic behavior dominantly, where the head is on parking zone. Parametric study of suspension design is made to find out the optimal value for increasing the shock resistance of a disk drive.