Suppression of resonance amplitude of disk vibrations by squeeze air bearing plate

This paper investigates the effect of suppressing the vibration of a spinning disk/spindle system by applying a squeeze film damping to a commercially available HDD with five platters. The out-of-plane and in-plane vibrations of the top disk were measured with and without a squeeze air bearing and illustrated by the Campbell diagram. When the squeeze air bearing plate with angular length of 180/spl deg/ and radial length of 20 mm was used at 120 /spl mu/m clearance, the largest resonance amplitude of the out-of-plane disk vibration decreases to less than one third. The disk flutter caused by the surrounding air flow could be significantly suppressed. It was also found that the suppressing effect of the out-of-plane vibration can decrease proportionally to the in-plane vibration.