The friction coefficient is an important parameter in designing magnetic tape transports. We have introduced laser surface texturing to reduce the friction coefficient between guides and magnetic tape. The surface features enhance the formation of an air bearing and hence, reduce the friction coefficient. INTRODUCTION Lateral tape motion (LTM) is defined as the time-dependent motion of the tape...

A low friction coefficient and high bearing capacity can improve the service life of implants in human body. In this study, we firstly investigate mechanical properties inorganic thermal oxide coatings on titanium alloy (Ti6Al4V). Tribological experiments were performed for different tribo-pairs under uniform conditions. The coating Ti6Al4V formed at 300℃ was found to have excellent tribologica...

Air-lubricated foil bearings are used in a variety of applications such as turbomachinery, journal bearings, dentistry equipment, etc. [1–3]. One of the most intricate applications of air-lubricated foil bearings can be found in magnetic tape drives [4], where a magnetic tape moves over a read/write head and tape drive components such as guides (stationary) and rollers (rotating). Friction is a...

High power industrial machinery such as steam turbines and large pumps use journal bearings as rotor supports because this type of bearing is a high load carrying capacity. However, abnormal operating conditions in the journal bearings will degrade machine performance, shorten life time and increase the risk of operation. Bearing condition monitoring can detect faults at early stage and hence m...

Microball bearings can potentially provide robust and low friction support in micromachines such as micromotors and microgenerators. Their microtribological behavior needs to be investigated for design and control of such micromachines. In this paper a vision-based, non-intrusive measurement method is presented for characterization of friction in linear microball bearings. Infrared imaging is u...

Pivot bearing friction and flex cable nonlinearity are the two major torque nonlinearities which lead to performance degradation in hard disk drive (HDD) tracking tasks. Based on a comprehensive model of typical voice-coil-motor (VCM) actuator, which explicitly captures the characteristics of pivot bearing friction and flex cable nonlinearity, this paper presents the design of a parameterized c...

Surface texturing is used to increase hydrodynamic pressure and reduce friction and wear between parallel sliding surfaces in a variety of applications. The shape, geometry, and density of the patterned microtexture features play a key role in the tribological performance of such textured slider bearings. Lubrication models are used to predict the load-carrying capacity, friction coefficient, a...

Stimulus-responsive (SR), solvated polymers can switch between an expanded state and a collapsed state via external stimuli. Using molecular dynamics simulations, I show that such SR polymers can be employed to control the frictional response between two opposing polymer brushes in relative sliding motion. By using a brush composed of SR polymers in contact with a nonresponding solvated polymer...

The importance of friction and wear control cannot be over emphasized for economic reasons and longterm reliability. The savings can be substantial, and these savings can be obtained without the deployment of investment. Tribology is crucial to modern machinery which uses sliding and rolling surfaces. This article describes the tribological behavior analysis for the conventional materials i.e. ...