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Vibration Of Flex Circuits In Hard Disk Drives, Jonathan A. Wickert

Jonathan A. Wickert

A flex circuit connects the stationary electronic components in a hard disk drive to the rotating arm that carries the read/write heads and positions them above data tracks on the disk. Flex circuits are conventionally formed as a laminate of polyimide substrate, adhesive, and copper conductors. Deformation of a flex circuit is discussed in the context of the following stages: the initial unstressed shape, configurations in which stresses set and relax in response to elevated temperature, equilibrium, and small amplitude vibration. The model involves displacements of the flex circuit in the directions tangent and normal to the local equilibrium shape, …