2468

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 39, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

Air-Bearing Design Based on Global Approximation Concepts

Sang-Joon Yoon and Dong-Hoon Choi, Member, IEEE
AbstractThe purpose of this study is to automatically design the air-bearing surface shape to meet all desired flying performances using global approximation concepts. The reduced basis concept is used to reduce the number of design variables. The progressive quadratic response surface modeling is used to handle the nonsmooth and discontinuous cost and constraint functions. A multicriteria optimization problem is formulated to enhance the flying performance over the entire recording band during the steady-state and track-seek operations as well as the fast takeoff performance. Optimum solutions for the three target flying heights with four basis models are successfully obtained. Index TermsAir-bearing design, global approximation, reduced basis concept.

In this study, we chose four commercialized sliders, which are dissimilar in shape and characteristic, as basis models. We carried out design optimization to obtain improved flying performance during the track-seek operation [4] as well as the steadystate operation and the contact start/stop (CSS) operation. The ABS shapes with respect to three target flying heights are automatically designed. II. PROBLEM FORMULATION To effectively prevent contact between a slider and a disk over the recording band, a strictly confined flying attitude during the steady-state operation is required. The fast takeoff feature is required to minimize the risk of sliding contact in the landing zone during the CSS operation. Also, the changes in flying height and roll angle during the track seek operation should be restricted because they have a large impact on the drive reliability. Considering all of these design requirements, a multicriteria optimization problem is formulated as follows: find the design variables to minimize satisfying (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)

I. INTRODUCTION OR applications of nonlinear programming methods to large design problems, many of approximation concepts have been proposed [1]. Global approximation concepts, in general, are valid for the whole design space or large areas of it in contrast to local approximation ones. So, they have been used to modify the formulation of the problem from the outset and generate an alternate formulation that is more tractable. The most direct approach to approximating a problem formulation is the use of simplified analysis models, in which the reduced basis concept [2] is one of the possible ways to effectively reduce the number of design variables. In the optimum design involving a large number of design variables, some feasible design vectors may be available to start with. Since these design vectors may have been suggested by experienced designers, the size of the optimization problem can be reduced by expressing the design vector as a linear combination of the feasible design vectors. When the reduced basis concept is applied to the optimization problem, the cost and constraint functions with respect to the combination coefficients are not ensured to be smooth and continuous any more. Therefore, a global function approximation concept is strongly required, where approximate response surfaces smooth out possible discontinuities between models. Yoon et al. [3] suggested the air-bearing surface (ABS) design using a reduced basis concept. However, they considered only a steady state operation of the slider as a design requirement, and then showed a simple application of it by using similar basis shapes.
Manuscript received January 2, 2003. This work was supported by the Center of Innovative Design Optimization Technology (iDOT), Korea Science and Engineering Foundation. The authors are with the the Center of Innovative Design Optimization Technology (iDOT), Hanyang University, Seoul 133-791, Korea (e-mail: ysjyoon@hanyang.ac.kr; dhchoi@hanyang.ac.kr). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TMAG.2003.816440

and denote the smallest and Here, the subscripts denotes the target value for the largest values, respectively. flying height which is measured where the magnetic head is located. The superscripts and denote lower and upper limit and signify the values, respectively. The subscripts means to move the slider from track-seek values, where means inner track to outer track in the radial direction and that the slider comes back from outer track to inner track. refers to the glide flying height in the landing zone and is is the positive value for the tolerance of the flying height. the number of design variables. Introducing the reduced basis concept, the design variable vector can be replaced with the combination of the basis shapes as (10)

0018-9464/03$17.00 2003 IEEE

Authorized licensed use limited to: IEEE Xplore. Downloaded on April 21, 2009 at 09:21 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

YOON AND CHOI: AIR-BEARING DESIGN BASED ON GLOBAL APPROXIMATION CONCEPTS

2469

Fig. 1.

Gain/loss of air-bearing skew angle and air-flow velocity.

Fig. 2.

Basis models. TABLE I OPTIMUM SOLUTIONS

where is a constant vector added for generality and is a is a combination or participation coeffibasis shape vector. cient. If is the number of designs available, then this set of combination coefficients is restricted as (11) dimensions can be and the actual optimization problem of dimensional design problem in terms of reduced to an . Althe generalized design variables , though this approximated problem has only a restricted form of the actual problem, any solution of the approximated problem always satisfies all of (1)(9). In addition, a recess depth and of the ABS are chosen as the design a shallow step depth variables since they have a major influence on the flying attitude parameters. The PQRSM [5], which is the optimization program based on a global function approximation, is employed to solve the nonsmooth and discontinuous problem as mentioned above. The flying attitude of the slider during the track seek operation is calculated at seven equally spaced radial positions. For the numerical simulation of them, the quasi-static approach [6] is used, in which the track seek motion can be described by the changes of the air-bearing skew angle and air-flow velocity. III. COMPUTATIONAL RESULTS The overall dimensions and operating conditions of the model sliders are the same as mentioned in Yoon et al. [3]. The inside and outside radii of the recording band are specified as 21.41 and 44.37 mm, respectively, and the corresponding skew angles as 6.18 and 16.69 deg, respectively. While the slider moves from the inner track to the outer track, it is accelerated to 2.5 m/s until 25.41 mm, followed by constant velocity to 40.37 mm, and then decelerated to 0 m/s when it reaches the outer track. The slider then comes back toward inner track following the same profile. Fig. 1 shows the gain/loss of the air-bearing skew angle and air-flow velocity during the full stroke track-seek operation. Four commercially available slider models, which are dissimilar in shape and characteristic, are selected as the basis models as shown in Fig. 2. Here, the region of trailing rails is not included in basis vectors as modification vectors since the central trailing rail including the magnetic head is restricted to change

(a)

(b)

(c) Fig. 3. Optimized configurations. (a) 15 nm. (b) 12 nm. (c) 9 nm.

and also the left-right trailing rail is not installed in all basis in (10) is set by positions of trailing rails of models. Hence, the last model. The basis vectors are also defined, in which the entries corresponding to positions on trailing rails are zero. Since the fourth basis shape is used as an initial slider model, , and the initial values of the design variables are , respectively. Note those of and are 1.524 and 0.1524 that becomes a dependent variable from (11). The lower and upper limits for the pitch angle are 150 and 250 rad, respecis set tively, and for roll angle, 4 and 4 rad, respectively. is estimated at the landing zone, where the to be 1 nm. disk radius is 18.49 mm with 2000 r/min.

Authorized licensed use limited to: IEEE Xplore. Downloaded on April 21, 2009 at 09:21 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.

2470

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON MAGNETICS, VOL. 39, NO. 5, SEPTEMBER 2003

Fig. 5. Fast takeoff performance.

resent no constraint violation at the optimum solution. To directly compare the flying characteristics of the optimized designs with those of the initial one, the variations of flying height, pitch angle and roll angle along the disk radius are plotted in Fig. 4(a)(c), respectively. Fig. 5 also shows the takeoff behaviors of the optimized designs with that of the initial one. IV. CONCLUSIONS In this study, optimum designs of the ABS were carried out by using global approximation concepts. A multicriteria optimization problem was formulated to enhance the flying performance over the entire recording band during the steady-state and track-seek operations as well as the fast takeoff performance in the landing zone. To effectively reduce the number of design variables, the reduced basis concept was introduced and PQRSM was employed as the optimization solver in order to handle nonsmooth and discontinuous functions. The numerical procedure was then established to automatically find the optimum values of design variables. Our program was applied to the three target flying heights of 15, 12, and 9 nm with four basis models. Consequently, the optimum solution to meet all design requirements was automatically obtained. Their results showed the enhanced flying performance during the steady-state and track-seek operations, in addition to the fast takeoff performance.
Fig. 4. Steady-state and track seek performances. (a) Flying height. (b) Pitch angle. (c) Roll angle.

REFERENCES
[1] J.-F. M. Barthelemy and R. T. Haftka, Approximation concepts for optimum structural designa review, Struct. Optimiz., vol. 5, pp. 129144, 1993. [2] G. N. Vanderplaats, Efficient algorithm for numerical airfoil optimization, J. Aircraft, vol. 16, pp. 842847, Dec. 1979. [3] S.-J. Yoon, D.-I. Kim, T.-G. Jeong, and D.-H. Choi, Optimizations of air-lubricated slider bearings using the reduced-basis concept, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 38, pp. 21742176, Sept. 2002. [4] T.-S. Kang, D.-H. Choi, and T. G. Jeong, Optimal design of HDD air-lubricated slider bearings for improving dynamic characteristics and operating performance, ASME J. Tribol., vol. 123, pp. 541547, July 2001. [5] K.-J. Hong, M.-S. Kim, and D.-H. Choi, Efficient approximation method for constructing quadratic response surface model, KSME Int. J., vol. 15, pp. 876888, July 2001. [6] E. Cha, C. Chiang, and J. J. K. Lee, Flying height change during seek operation for TPC sliders, IEEE Trans. Magn., vol. 31, pp. 29672969, Nov. 1995.

In this study, three target flying heights of 15, 12, and 9 nm are assigned to illustrate the automatic configuration design feature of our approach. The original and optimum solutions of the normalized design variables are shown in Table I, and their configurations are also presented in Fig. 3. The changes of the recess and shallow step depths are dominant in handling the target flying height, and the variation of the asymmetry leads to an enhancement of flight performance. The optimum solution could be obtained in 21 h on a Pentium IV 1-GHz personal computer. The convergence history of the cost value for each target model shows good convergence to the optimum solutions. The constraint values also rep-

Authorized licensed use limited to: IEEE Xplore. Downloaded on April 21, 2009 at 09:21 from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.