Identifying Damping of a Gyroscopic System Through the Half-Power Method and Its Applications to Rotating Disk/Spindle Systems

This paper applies the half-power method to identify damping of a gyroscopic system. At first, the underlying principle of the half-power method for damped, gyroscopic systems is explained. Then the method is demonstrated on a rotating disk/spindle system often used in computer hard disk drives. The disk/spindle system consists of multiple elastic disks mounted on a rigid spindle supported by ball bearings. The flexibility of the bearings allows the spindle to undergo rigid-body translation and rocking. Calibrated experiments were conducted in vacuum to obtain frequency response functions at different rotational speed. Application of the half-power method shows that the disk and bearing dampings are independent of rotational speed and can be modeled adequately as viscous damping. Moreover, the damping of the ball bearings is two orders of magnitude smaller than that of a fluid-film bearing of similar size.