Fretting wear at the dimple/gimbal interface of a hard disk drive suspension was investigated for stainless steel dimples in contact with stainless steel gimbals coated with diamondlike carbon (DLC) of different thicknesses and different elastic moduli. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to evaluate the size and characteristics of the wear scar of both the dimple and the gimbal. Fretti...

The goal of infrared (IR) scene projection is to provide realistic testing and evaluation of ihfrared-imaging sensors in a controlled laboratory environment. For a valid test, a dynamic spatial and temporal scene that accurately represents real-world targets over a specified wavelength band must be generated. Requirements for scene projection are determined by the sensor under test and can be b...

Wear particles in a hard disk drive may cause the head/disk interface to fail. We have experimentally investigated wear particle generation resulting from fretting wear between the dimple on the suspension and the gimbal spring. We have found that increasing the normal load as well as using a low friction coating reduces the formation of wear particles. INTRODUCTION Examination of failed hard d...

Momentum exchange devices such as reaction wheels and control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) form an important class of torque actuators for spacecraft attitude control. A single gimbal CMG comprises of a rapidly spinning rotor mounted on a gimbal. The orientation of the rotor can be changed by applying torque to the gimbal, and the reaction torque thus generated serves to control the spacecraft atti...

Radar Seeker is used in missile system for detection and tracking a target. It will be integrated in the nose cone of the missile. During testing and launching of the missile all necessary important parameters and status of the seeker are collected for analysis to ascertain the health of the Seeker. Similarly the configuration and control of the seeker is to ensure the proper mode of operation ...

Static head orientations obey Donders' law and are postulated to be rotations constrained by a Fick gimbal. Head oscillations can be voluntary or generated during natural locomotion. Whether the rotation axes of the voluntary oscillations or during locomotion are constrained by the same gimbal is unknown and is the subject of this study. Head orientation was monitored with an Optotrak (Northern...

The satellite thruster's configuration plays also an important role in providing the attitude control torques. In this paper, after discussing the gimbal thruster's structure and its benefits, several configurations based on 2, 3 and 4 gimbal thrusters are investigated in order to identify the most suitable orientation that consume less fuel and raise reliability. Then, a 3-axis attit...

This study proposes a method of selecting a set of gimbal angles in the final state and applies the method to the mode-scheduling steering law of variable-speed control moment gyros intended for multi-target pointing manoeuvres in the threeaxis attitude control of a spacecraft. The proposed method selects reference final gimbal angles, considering the condition numbers of the Jacobian matrix of...

Cross-sensitivity matrices are used to translate the response of three-axis accelerometers into components of acceleration along the axes of a specified coordinate system. For inertial three-axis accelerometers, this coordinate system is often defined by the axes of a gimbal-based instrument that exposes the device to different acceleration inputs as the gimbal is rotated in the local gravitati...

Line-of-sight(LOS) stabilization systems form part of modern surveillance and fire control systems. Gimbal system is stabilized using PID controller and simple compensator. The performance of the two systems are compared. This paper shows which of the two design techniques is a better choice for the given gimbal system.