Motion pictures of air bearing dynamics under stressed conditions

We present here a study of the motion of an air-bearing slider at low flying heights as it accesses over a particulate disk and interacts with asperities on the surface. The measurements are made using a capacitance technique, with a specially made multi-sensor slider and high bandwidth electronics. The slider's motion is captured using a fast digitizer and reconstructed in motion picture format. Three data sets are discussed as examples of the different types of motion which can occur due to the slider-disk interaction.