Experimental and theoretical studies of PZT glide head vibration

This paper studies natural frequencies of a PZT glide head through calibrat ed experiments and a finite element analysis (FEA). In the experimental stu dies, the PZT served as an actuator exciting the glide head from 100 kHz to 1.3 MHz, and a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) measured displacement of the glide head at the inner or outer rail. The natural frequencies were measur ed through PZT impedance and frequency response functions from PZT to LDV. In FEA, the slider, PZT, and glue (epoxy) were meshed by brick elements. Na tural frequencies predicted from FEA agree well with the experimental resul ts with 5% of difference. Therefore, modeling of the epoxy layer is critica l in predicting the natural frequencies of PZT glide heads.