Turbulent Flows in Hard Disk Drives: a Computational Investigation into Flow Inducedvibrations in Hard Disk Drives

This monograph is based on the doctoral thesis of theauthor at the University of California, Berkeley (2006). The text outlines a computational investigation ofthe turbulent air flow in hard disk drives and theresulting impact of the flow on the vibrations ofvarious drive components. This work mainly uses LargeEddy Simulation (LES) implemented in commercial CFDcodes to simulate the complex flow fields. After thebasic features of the flow are explored, a comparisonof different LES models and several commercial CFDcodes is presented. Extensive validation is performedwith experimental data and grid convergence studiesare described. Finally the LES results are used tocompute the vibrations of the rotating disk and thehead-gimbal assembly (HGA). The HGA vibrations arealso computed with the presence of several flowmitigation devices. This work will be of interest toscientists and engineers in the hard drive industry,general practitioners of CFD, and researchers in theLES field.