THE EFFECT OF DISK ROUGHNESS ON THE WEAR OF CONTACT RECORDING-HEADS

In conventional disk files, the slider is sorted by an air-bearing whe n the disk is rotating at its designed speed. With the continued reduc tion of magnetic spacing in order to increase the areal density a natu ral extension of the traditional recording system is contact recording , We investigate the wear of the contact recording head designed for s uch a class of rigid magnetic disk files where the read/write element carrying slider is intended to remain in continuous contact during eve ry phase of the disk drive operation. In particular, we study the effe ct of disk roughness and load on the wear rate of the recording head I t is observed that the wear rate is proportional to initial interfacia l load, however the observation cannot be extrapolated beyond the load s studied in the paper. The experimental observations agree well with expectations for a system where an abrasive wear model applies. We als o show that the wear rate is predominantly governed by the existence o f isolated asperities that lie well outside of three standard deviatio ns of the disk surface roughness.