Suppression of Resonance Amplitude of Disk/Spindle Vibration by Squeeze Air Bearing Damping

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° and radial length of 20 mm was used at 120 μm clearance, the largest resonance amplitude of the out-of-plane disk vibration decreases to less than 40%. 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 proportionally decrease the in-plane vibration.