Microsystem Technologies 9 (2003) 386394 Springer-Verlag 2003 DOI 10.

1007/s00542-002-0268-5

Analysis and design of hydrodynamic journal air bearings for high performance HDD spindle
T. Hwang, K. Ono

386 Abstract In this paper, we proposed the design concept of NRRO-free non-contact bearings for a high performance hard disk drive (HDD) spindle. We numerically analyzed three types of hydrodynamic journal air bearings [gas dynamic bearing (GDB)], such as a partial herringbone groove, a sinusoidal wave, and a taper-at type. And we compared their performances in terms of pressure distribution, load capacity, radial stiffness, unbalance response, and stability threshold. For the design examples, we examined the Case 1 with 2.0 lm bearing clearance and 10000 rpm, and the Case 2 with 1.0 lm clearance and 15000 rpm. As a result of numerical analysis, we found that the taper-at type was the most promising for high performance HDD spindle compared with the other types. It can have the bearing stiffness of about 3.0 106 N/m in Case 1 and of about 2.0 107 N/m in Case 2. We also discussed the allowance of parameters for the optimal design of the taper-at type journal bearing. Pg r0 R Ws w Wn w a bg g l h x x0 L W dimensionless atmospheric pressure radial position of unbalanced mass [m] radius of GDB [mm] amplitude of wave for wave type GDB [lm] number of wave for wave type GDB position angle of static eccentricity of rotor [] declined angle of groove for groove type GDB [] viscous coefcient [kg/ms] circumfrential position angle of GDB [] external angular frequency [rpm] angular frequency of rotor [rpm] bearing number onset ratio (x/x0)

1 Introduction Recently, HDD came to be a representative storage device by maintaining its remarkable market share in data storage devices, and it needs to have much higher recording List of symbols density and performances. One of the core technologies for bg g width of groove for groove type GDB [mm] realizing higher performance in HDD may be the design bg tf width of groove for taper-at type GDB [mm] and development of a high-speed spindle motor supported bf tf width of at part for taper-at type GDB [mm] by a non-contact bearing system. When the area recording bt tf width of taper part for taper-at type GDB [mm] density is about 20 Gb/in2, the track density has to be dg g depth of groove for groove type GDB [mm] about 50000 tracks per inch (TPI) at least, which means dg tf depth of groove for taper-at type GDB [mm] the requirement of under 0.03 lm of non-repeatable dr tf depth of taper for taper-at type GDB [mm] runout (NRRO) of a spindle. In order to satisfy such strict D diameter of GDB [mm] specications, the spindle should be supported by a none quantity of static eccentricity of rotor [mm] contact bearing system in both of the axial and radial K radial stiffness of GDB [N/m] directions, in place of conventional ball bearings, which Kf tangential stiffness of GDB [N/m] inherently cause NRRO due to the geometrical imperfecL length of GDB [mm] tions of ball bearing elements (Takao, 1996). m mass of rotor [kg] There have been numerous presentations about the non0 m mass of unbalance [kg] contact bearing system for HDD spindle during the past " M dimensionless stable mass few years, and most of such designs were about the bearing Ng number of grooves for groove type GDB systems applying oil lubricated hydrodynamic bearings in Ntf number of pairs for taper-at type GDB both of the radial and axial supports (Roger Ku, 1996, 1997; P dimesionless hydrodynamic pressure Swann and Talke, 1996; Zang and Hatch, 1995; Richter and Talke, 1998; Bouchard et al., 1987; Chen and Zhang, 1997; Yoshida, 1996; Futamota, 1996). The oil lubricated bearings Received: 19 April 2002/Accepted: 4 September 2002 have higher bearing stiffness than the gas lubricated bearings do. But we have to solve such problems as a T. Hwang leakage of lubricant, a characteristic change of lubricants Samsung Advance Institute of Technology, caused by the friction heat, a disturbance phenomenon in PO Box 111, Suwon, Korea 440-600 bearing clearance caused by the inertia force of high roE-mail: thwang@sait.samsung.co.kr tating speed and viscosity, and the contamination due to lubricant. We also need to design a spindle motor with a K. Ono (&) large driving torque, so it becomes difcult to miniaturize Tokyo Institute of Technology, the spindle motor, and to increase the rotational speed of 2-12-1 Ookayama, Meguro-ku, Tokyo 152, Japan

the spindle motor with oil lubricated bearings. According to the development of novel methods to meet the precision manufacturing, we can design high precision mechanical parts for GDB. We can manufacture the parts to meet such a specication with the radial clearance of 12 lm in GDB composed of the metal powder sintered bearing bush and the surface coated shaft. Then we are able to design and develop GDB having no less bearing stiffness than uid bearing does. Though we can see the commercialized laser scanner unit in which the polygonal mirror is supported by GDB, the rotating speed was about 30000 rpm that was enough rotational speed to apply GDB. (Ono and Hwang, 1994; Hwang and Ono, 1996). In this paper, we aim to establish the design concept of a non-contact bearing system for HDD spindle, and to optimize the journal GDB in regards to the structure and bearing performances. We propose the non-contact bearing system composed of journal GDB and passive magnetic thrust bearings. Thrust bearings are composed of passive magnetic bearings (MB) using the magnetic repulsive forces of two couples of permanent magnetic rings, and MBs are positioned on upper and lower parts of a spindle. As for journal bearings, we numerically analyzed the performances of three types of GDB: a partial herringbone groove, a sinusoidal wave and a taper-at.

unbalance force is 0.5 N, because we have to adjust the unbalance force below 0.20.5 N in the actual assembling process.

3 Design and numerical analysis of journal GDB 3.1 Three types of journal GDB Figure 2 shows the basic schemes and design parameters in three types of journal GDB. In Fig. 2a, the herringbone groove type GDB is shown, which is the most well-known type of uid hydrodynamic bearing in both air lubricated bearing and oil lubricated bearing. The hydrodynamic forces are mostly generated from the pumping effect by the herringbone grooves. We use the partial herringbone groove type GDB, which is grooved longitudinally to a quarter of length from both ends. Figure 2b shows the sinusoidal wave type journal GDB which was proposed in order to generate the radial stiffness at concentricity of rotor (Hwang and Ono, 1995). Due to the sinusoidal variation with N periods of circumferential clearance, there appear the positive and negative pressures from the wedge effect. Because of the non-linear effect of compressible uids, the positive pressure increment is larger than the negative pressure decrement. The local circumferential clearance of wave type GDB, hh, can be described in the form: hh C e cosh a Wa cosWn h 1
Figure 2c shows the design parameters of taper-at type GDB with separating grooves. This type is proposed in order to eliminate the negative pressure in wave type GDB. Due to separating grooves, the positive pressure that is generated on the taper region can maintain positive value throughout at region. The separating grooves are fabricated between the trailing edge of the at region and the leading edge of the taper region. The depth of separating groove is about ten times of bearing clearance.

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2 Structure of non-contact hybrid bearing system Figure 1 shows the schematic structure of a HDD spindle motor supported by non-contact hybrid type bearing, which is composed of a journal GDB and thrust MBs proposed by this paper. A journal GDB is created between the outer surface of a central xed shaft and the inner surface of a cylindrical journal bush inside a hub. The journal bush is made by the metal powder sintering method, and the outer surface of the central xed shaft is coated by the micrometer thickened surface coating method. Two thrust MBs (MB1 and MB2) are composed of two permanent magnetic rings facing each other with the same polarity, and are positioned on the upper and the lower parts of a hub. The axial stiffness of thrust MB is designed to have 1.52.0 N/mm of one pair, considering the mass of rotating assembly of about 100 gf. The spindle motor structure composed of a journal GDB and two thrust MBs will be required to supress the locking mode of the spindle in angular gyro motion of a rotor. The manufacturing error between the inner diameter of a disk and the outer diameter of a hub is about 50 lm, and the mass of rotating parts is about 100 gf. Nevertheless, we will calculate the unbalance response amplitude when

3.2 Numerical analysis of journal GDB From the assumptions of isothermal ideal gas and Newtonian uid in a numerical control volume, we can express axial mass ux (Mz) and circumferential mass ux (Mh), qh3 oP 12l oz qh3 oP Rx qh Mh 12l Rhz 2 Mz

Fig. 1. Schematic structure of HDD spindle motor

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Fig. 2ac. Schemes and design parameters in three types of GDB. a Herringbone groove type of GDB; b sinusoidal wave type of GDB; c taper-at type of GDB with seperating groove

The compressible Reynolds equation is discrete by using the divergence formulation and the nite difference method (FDM). Then the equation is divided into the static pressure equation and the dynamic pressure equation by the perturbation method. By solving the static pressure equation using the NewtonRaphson method and the Column Method, we obtained the pressure distribution and load capacity. The dynamic pressure equation was solved through Laplace transformation and column method, and the dynamic stiffness of complex type was calculated. If we denote the bearing reactive force by ffx ; fy gT , and the independent displacements by fx; ygT , the relations between reactive

forces and displacements in the frequency domain is expressed as

" Zx x x Zx y " " fx y " Zyx x Zyy " " y fy

Here, Zij iCij + Kij, i, j x, y is called as the dynamic stiffness whose real and imaginary parts correspond to bearing stiffness and damping coefcient multiplied by angular frequency. If we arrange Zxx, Zxy, Zyx and Zyy according to the eccentricity direction and its tangential direction, we can calculate the dynamic radial stiffness and the tangential stiffness.

4 Results of numerical analysis for journal GDB We numerically calculated the bearing characteristics of journal GDB: the static pressure distribution, the load capacity, the bearing stiffness and the characteristics of whirl motion of the rotor. We also calculated the characteristics of the rotor-bearing system: the translational response amplitude of unbalance excitation and stability threshold. Then we compared the three types GDB. (diameter of GDB; 8.0 mm, length of GDB; 8.0 mm). 4.1 Static pressure distributions Figure 3 shows the circumferential static pressure distributions of three types of journal GDB at concentric posi-

tion of rotor in Case 2. The arrow shows the axial direction in which z0 means the bearing end and z5 means the bearing center. The shapes of journal clearance of each type show in the low region. The pressure ratio of 1.0 means the atmospheric pressure, more than 1.0 means the positive pressure, and less than 1.0 means the negative pressure. In Fig. 3a of herringbone groove type GDB, the positive pressure is shown through all regions, even though the pressure variation appears along the groove part and land part. Without static eccentricity, the pumping effect occurs only in the herringbone grooved zone, and neither pumping effect nor wedge effect occurs in the plain zone. The results of sinusoidal wave type journal GDB are shown in Fig. 3b, with the conditions of sinusoidal

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Fig. 3ac. Pressure distributions in three types of GDB at concentric condition (case 2). a Groove type GDB; b wave type GDB; c taper-at type GDB

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amplitude of 1.0-lm and period of 3. The positive pressures appear in decreasing circumferential clearance region in the rotating direction caused by the wedge effect. The negative pressures appear in increasing clearance area in the rotating direction. Though the positive pressure increases, the negative pressure decreases due to nonlinear effect of compressible uid. The existence of negative pressure in bearing clearance may degrade load capacity in GDB. The negative pressure is also not desirable because contamination is likely to gather in the negative pressure region. Figure 3c shows the numerical results of taper-at type GDB in which there are 3 pairs of groove-taper-at part. Only positive pressures appear, even though there appears ambient atmospheric pressure on groove regions. In the tapered part the hydrodynamic uid is pressurized by the wedge effect. In most of the at part the positive pressure is kept the same with little decrease, and the sharp drop of positive pressure appears at the end of the at part down to atmosphere. We call the grooves separating grooves because they play a role to prevent from dropping to negative pressure caused by the inverse step effect.

4.2 Load capacity in GDB Figure 4 shows the results of load capacities in three types of GDB for Case 1. The load capacity was calculated for the eccentricity of the rotor from 0 to 0.9. When shock is applied to the disk, the large eccentricity of the rotor may occur. We found that in the case of groove type and taperat type GDB, the load capacity increases slowly for low eccentricity, and increases rapidly above the eccentricity value of 0.8. But in the case of wave type GDB the load capacity increases slowly in the entire eccentricity region. It is desirable for the maximum load capacity to be as large as possible in order to avoid the contact. 4.3 Dynamic stiffness in GDB The dynamic stiffness in journal GDB can be expressed as radial stiffness and tangential stiffness. The radial stiffness, called bearing stiffness means a resistance against the radial displacement of the rotor, and the tangential stiffness means a resistance against the whirl motion of the rotor in

GDB. The direction of tangential stiffness is along the tangential line of radial stiffness in a rotating direction. Figure 5 shows the numerical results of the radial stiffness of journal GDB. The rotating speed of the rotor ranges from 1000 rpm to 100000 rpm for (a) and from 1000 rpm to 65000 rpm for (b) without static eccentricity. From (a) we can see that the radial stiffness of wave type and taper-at type increased proportionally to the rotating speed up to about 25000 rpm, and slowly tended to be saturated above that. But the radial stiffness of groove type GDB increases proportionally to the rotating speed above 25000 rpm. Such tendencies of radial stiffness are the same as in the case of (b) too. It is thought that the pumping effect by herringbone grooves occurs almost in proportional to the rotating speed in groove type GDB. The increase of pressure due to the wedge effect seems to saturate in wave and taper-at type. From Fig. 5a, we can nd that the radial stiffness of taper-at type GDB is larger than that of groove type GDB up to 25000 rpm. But the stiffness of groove type comes to be the largest above 25000 rpm because of the pumping effect. It means that the herringbone groove type GDB needs to have a high rotating speed in order to recover the reduced wedge effect pressure on groove depth, and in order to overcome the wedge effect in taper-at type GDB. It is seen that the largest radial stiffness can be obtained by taper-at type GDB in both of 10000 rpm and 15000 rpm. When we design the journal GDB with 2.0 lm clearance for HDD spindle, we can obtain the value of radial stiffness of about 3.4 106 N/m, at 10000 rpm in taper-at type GDB. From Fig. 5b it is noted that the tendencies of each three types of GDB are totally similar to the ones in Fig. 5a. The wedge effects of taper-at type and wave type seem to increase with the reduction of bearing clearance compared with groove type. In particular, the radial stiffness of

Fig. 4. Load capacity with eccentricity in three types of GDB (case 1; 10000 rpm C2.0 lm)

Fig. 5a, b. Radial stiffness in three types of GDB. a Clearance 2.0 lm; b clearance 1.0 lm

taper-at type GDB becomes much larger than that of groove type up to about 50000 rpm rotating speed. When we design a taper-at type GDB with 15000 rpm and 1.0 lm bearing clearance, we can obtain the bearing stiffness of about 1.8 107 N/m, which is about 1.6 times larger than that of groove type, and about 1.8 times larger than that of wave type.

the translation responses of a rotor-bearing system by Inverse Laplace Transformation. Figure 7 shows the numerical results of translation response amplitudes of a rotor. We substituted the unbalance mass and the radius of unbalance mass for 15 mg and 50 mm respectively assuming the unbalance force to be about 0.5 N. Dashed lines express the permissible amplitude of RRO of 0.5 lm for 10 GB/in2 HDD. In Fig. 7a, the unbalance amplitude of taper-at type GDB is smaller than 4.4 that of herringbone groove type GDB up to 20000 rpm. Radial and tangential stiffness on whirl motion When we design the HDD spindle of 10000 rpm, the unWhen a rotor is supported by journal GDB, a whirl balance amplitude becomes around 0.5 lm which is under motion with rotating frequency of rotor arises in the the permissible amplitude of RRO in taper-at type GDB. rotating direction, which is caused by the unbalanced force of a rotor. We numerically analyzed the variations In Fig. 7b we can nd that the amplitude of taper-at type of radial stiffness and tangential stiffness with a variation GDB shows the smallest over all rotational speeds, and that it becomes about 0.1 lm at 10000 rpm. Such value of of whirl ratio. Figure 6 shows the results of the taper-at type GDB translation amplitude of unbalance excitation is enough for Case 1 and 2. Solid lines express the radial stiffness for high performance HDD spindle. and dashed lines do the tangential stiffness. In any case, radial stiffness never becomes zero, and there are enough 4.6 differences between a value of radial stiffness and a value Estimation of stability threshold of tangential stiffness at whirl ratio of 0.5. When the We performed the theoretical analysis of stability in order whirl ratio equals to be 1.0, the magnitude of radial to estimate the translation stability threshold for the rotorstiffness means the resistance to unbalance force, while bearing system supported by three types of journal GDBs. that of the negative tangential stiffness means the The equation of motion using the dynamic stiffness of damping effect. GDB in Eq. (5) is written as in the frequency domain.

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4.5 Unbalance response amplitude of rotor The translation response on the unbalance excitation was numerically analyzed in order to estimate the repeatable run-out (RRO) of HDD spindle supported by three types journal GDB. The translation motion equations of a rotorbearing system supported by GDB on the unbalance excitation in the frequency domain are expressed in the form: x " m"s2 Cxx "s Cxy "s Kxx x Kxy " m0 r 0 x2 2 x x y y s x2 s " m"s2 Cyx "s Cyy "s Kyx x Kyy " m0 r0 x2 2 y x y y s x2 4
The values of damping matrix and stiffness matrix can be calculated from the dynamic bearing stiffness of GDB, Zij Zij iCij Kij ; i; j x; y in each type. Then we can solve

" " " " ms2 X Cxx sX Cxy s" Kxx X Kxy Y 0 y " " " " " ms2 Y Cyx sX Cyy sY Kyx X Kyy Y 0

If the solutions of motion are assumed to be fx; ygT fX; YgT eixt and s ix, the determinant has to

Fig. 6. Radial and tangential stiffness towards whirl ratio in Taper-at type of GDB

Fig. 7a, b. Amplitudes of unbalance response. a Clearance 2.0 lm; b clearance 1.0 lm

be zero in order to satisfy the equations and it can be expressed as

x2 m icxx kxx x2 m icyy kyy icxy kxy icyx kyx 0

When the rotor-bearing system becomes stable limitation, the solution of Eq. (6) is a pure real number. Thus the real part and the imaginary part in Eq. (6) must be zero simultaneously. Introducing the following non-dimensional parameters, 392

x X; x0

6l R K x0 Pa C

cij pa DL K2 Cx0 36  2 ;

" Cij ;

 5 " Pa mR C M l2 DL R

kij pa DL K2 C 36

" Kij ; 7

we can obtain the two equations of the form.

" " " " " " " " MX2 Kxx MX2 Kyy Cxx Cyy Cxy Cyx " " Kxy Kyx 0 " " " " " " " " Cxx MX2 Kyy Cyy MX2 Kxx Cxy Kyx " " Cyx Kxy 0; 1; 2

stiffness becomes less than 5% of maximum stiffness. In the ratio of widths of taper and at regions, there appears the maximum stiffness around 0.6, which means the at part is longer than the taper part. Thus we will design the value of width ratio of 0.6. 5 Figure 9b shows for the Case 2 of clearance 1.0 lm and Optimal designs of taper-flat type journal GDB We found that the taper-at type GDB is superior to the rotational speed of 15000 rpm. It is clear that there exists also the optimal values of design parameters and that the other two types for high performance HDD spindle. We need to optimize the values of design parameters in taper- variations are more obvious as for each design parameter. The optimal values of design parameters are nearly the at type GDB in order to obtain the maximum bearing same with Case 1. In this Case 2, we designed optimally the stiffness. parameter values which are 0.1 mm for the groove width, Figure 9a shows the optimal design processes with 2.0 lm for the taper depth and 0.6 for the ratio of length of regards to design parameters considering the maximum bearing stiffness and manufacturing tolerance for the Case taper and at. 1 of clearance 2.0 lm and 10000 rpm. As for the depth of taper and the ratio of circumferential widths of taper and 6 at, we can obtain the optimal value of taper depth of Conclusion 2.0 lm, and the ratio of 0.6 in Case 1. We will design the In this paper, we proposed the novel type non-contact value of groove width, 0.1 mm considering the groove bearings composed of journal GDB and thrust MBs for depth of about 50 lm. When we design the value of taper high performance HDD spindle. We numerically analyzed depth for 2.0 1.0 lm, and the variation of bearing the bearing characteristics of three types GDB in order to

Figure 8 shows the results of translation stability analysis with regards to the rotating speed for 2.0-lm of the clearance and taper-at type GDB. The thick solid lines show the dimensionless stable mass, and the thick dashed lines express onset ratio, and the light dashed lines mean the actual values of dimensionless stable mass calculated by the design values. The value of onset ratio shows to be about 0.5. It means that the system may become unstable at a half rotational frequency. The rotor-bearing systems are enough to be stable up to about 50000 rpm even, and that in the rotor-bearing system supported by GDB tend to exhibit a half frequency whirl phenomenon due to external disturbances. And we can nd that the translation stability thresholds are 95000 rpm, 60000 rpm, and over 100000 rpm in groove type, wave type, and taper-at type respectively. We can nd that any types of GDB are enough to be stable up to about 20000 rpm when bearing clearance is 2.0 lm.

Fig. 8ac. Results of translation stability. a Groove type GDB; b wave type GDB; c taper-at type GDB

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Fig. 9a, b. Optimization of design parameters in taper-at type GDB. a Depth of taper & ratio of taper and at region (case 1); b depth of taper & ratio of taper and at region (case 2)

optimize the shape of journal GDB. As a result, it is found that the bearing performances of the taper-at type GDB were superior to the other two types, and that the taper-at type GDB was the most desirable for high performance HDD spindle of 10000 rpm and 15000 rpm. In the case of 2.0 lm clearance and 10000 rpm rotational speed, the bearing stiffness of taper-at type GDB is 1.3 times larger than that of the groove type, and 1.6 times larger than in the wave type. When decreasing the bearing clearance to 1.0 lm and increasing the rotational speed to 15000 rpm, the difference of bearing stiffness between taper-at and the other two types becomes quite large: The bearing stiffness of taper-at type GDB is 1.6 times and 1.8 times larger than in groove type and wave type, respectively. It is found that the rotor-bearing system supported by taper-at GDB appears to be most stable, because the radial stiffness is much larger than the tangential stiffness in whirl ratio of 1.0. When the unbalance force was 0.5 N, the translation unbalance amplitude is under 0.5 lm for the clearance of 2.0 lm and under 0.1 lm for the clearance 1.0 lm at 10000 rpm in taper-at type. Then it will be enough to design for high performance HDD spindle with 10 Gb/in2. We may realize the taper-at type journal GDB with bearing clearance of 1.0 lm by the metal powder sintering method and the surface coating method. From the analysis of stability threshold, it was found that the rotor-bearing system supported by GDB is enough up to the rotational speed of 50000 rpm.

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