UC San Diego

This thesis presents experimental and theoretical studies of the characteristics of the head/disk interface at very low flying height. The study starts with a discussion of the tribological background of the head/disk interface and presents a review of the literature related to studies of the head/disk interface. Then, mechanical scaling laws for hard disk drives are discussed. Numerical results for failure inception of brittle and ductile hard disks due to high shock levels are presented. An experimental setup for measuring slider dynamics in five degrees-of-freedom (DOF) is presented. This is followed by experimental studies of slider vibrations due to slider/disk contacts. Thereafter, a study of slider vibrations due to write-head induced "thermal" pole-tip-protrusion is presented. Numerical simulations of slider vibrations are compared with experimental results. A method for measuring the magnetic spacing based on the read-back signal is presented. Finally, the results of this thesis are summarized and directions for future research are given