Simulations of Particle Trajectories in Hard Disk Drives Considering the Trapping Criterion

The presence of particles, which can intrude into the air bearing, is one of the most common factors in the failure of hard disk drives (HDDs). Previous studies have investigated particles trajectories with the assumption of ideal trapping or reflecting boundary conditions in air-filled drives. However, only the colliding particle with insufficient energy to escape the potential well will be trapped by the surface. In this paper, considering the particle-surface energy during the collision, the trapping criterion of the incident normal critical velocity (
$V_{\text {ni}}^{\mathrm {\ast }})$
for Al
₂
O
₃
particles is developed as the boundary conditions for different colliding surfaces inside a 2.5 in drive. Then, trapping status for Al
₂
O
₃
particles and particles trajectories inside the drive are simulated by using the commercial computational fluid dynamics solver FLUENT with user-defined functions. The results reveal that the particles will travel longer distances until trapped by HDD components when considering the trapping criterion. In addition, smaller particles will more likely degrade the head–disk interface reliability, since they easily stick on the disk surface.