Fretting Wear between a Hollow Sphere and Flat Surface

Wear particles in a hard disk drive may cause the head/disk interface to fail. We have experimentally investigated wear particle generation resulting from fretting wear between the dimple on the suspension and the gimbal spring. We have found that increasing the normal load as well as using a low friction coating reduces the formation of wear particles. INTRODUCTION Examination of failed hard disk drives has shown that wear particles are partly responsible for hard disk drive failure [1]. One source of wear particles in a hard disk drive is fretting wear between the dimple and the gimbal of a hard disk drive suspension. Figure 1 a) shows a top view and Fig 1 b) shows a side view of a typical hard disk drive suspension assembly. The slider, which contains the magnetic read/write element, is connected to the gimbal spring. The gimbal spring is attached to the suspension. A dimple is pressed in the suspension surface to allow roll and pitch motion of the gimbal with slider, during operation of the hard disk drive. Gimbal Slider Dimple Suspension Suspension Dimple