The main challenge in the design of hard-disk drives is to increase the density of data storage. Traditional disk-drive designs involve a read/write head positioned on a slider bearing that flies over a smooth spinning magnetic disk. The demand for larger data storage has made it necessary to reduce the minimum gap height for various design features of the air-bearing surface to be in the range...

This paper presents our latest research activities toward the development of electrostatic micromotors/microgenerators with a microball-bearing support mechanism and benzocyclobutene (BCB) low-k polymer insulating layers. The primary applications of these devices are long-range, high-speed micropositioning, high-speed micro pumping and micro power generation. In this paper, we present the devel...

Surface texturing is used to increase hydrodynamic pressure and reduce friction and wear between parallel sliding surfaces in a variety of applications. The shape, geometry, and density of the patterned microtexture features play a key role in the tribological performance of such textured slider bearings. Lubrication models are used to predict the load-carrying capacity, friction coefficient, a...

In this study the optimization is illustrated by maximizing the load-carrying capacity of a slider bearing represented by a thermohydrodynamic lubrication model. An efficient optimization scheme, DIviding RECTangles (DIRECT), is coded for parallel computing in a single-system image cluster. The main focus of this study was to examine the performance of the standard DIRECT algorithm in coarse-gr...