Acoustic emission studies of thin film rigid disks and proximity recording sliders and its applications to tribology

This work investigates the flying and contact phenomena of proximity contact recording sliders and their effects on the tribological performance of thin film media by the use of acoustic emission analysis. Proximity contact recording sliders included negative pressure and tri-rail types of tripad sliders. Mechanical and laser-induced textured magnetic rigid disks were used in this study. The laser bump heights of laser textured disks were controlled to achieve a desired tribological performance and the relationship between the laser bump heights and acoustic emission energy during drag and start/stop testing for different slider designs was studied. Emphasis was also placed on identifying the critical parameters of media and slider designs for tribological performance improvement. An analysis of the slider body natural frequencies during flying at the operational speed has been demonstrated to be well correlated to the contact behavior at the head-disk interface. Moreover, the environmental and lubrication effects on the fixed tracking flyability performance were investigated and the acoustic emission data also agreed fairly well with the observed degree of contamination on sliders and degradation on the textured media.