Design sensitivity analysis of air-lubricated slider bearings

We present the design sensitivity analysis for two pico sliders. The discrete form of the generalized lubrication equation based on a control volume formulation is used as the equations of equilibrium to analyze air-lubricated slider bearings. The residual function for the force equilibrium of the slider is employed as a constraint function. The design variables are the slider thickness parameters at all grid cells, determining the topological geometry of air-bearing surfaces. The simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed approach while the amount of calculation is reduced by 97% in comparison with the conventional finite difference approximation.