Sensing and Modeling Heat Transfer Between a Recording Head and Medium for Clearance Setting in HAMR

A thermistor-based proximity sensor enables identification of head-disk contact in a hard disk drive, allowing the setting of head-disk clearance. This sensor also provides thermal information, permitting validation of computational models used to design recording heads. We describe here a set of models, and a related set of experiments to probe thermal and mechanical characteristics at the head-disk interface. Example results are shown, leading to the conclusion that models with diffusive-ballistic equations are capable of simulating heat transfer through the gas bearing.