Mechanical Engineering Commons^™

Stability Analysis Of Floating Ball Bearing, T.V.V.L. Rao, Jerzy Sawicki

Jerzy T. Sawicki

Conventional disk drive motors supported on ball bearings (BBs) cause nonrepeatable runout (NRRO) due to the surface imperfections on balls and raceways. NRRO is a source of track misregistration between head and disk that inhibits high track density in a hard disk drive. Fluid dynamic bearings with herringbone grooves either on the rotating or stationary surfaces are a suitable replacement for conventional ball bearings. Herringbone grooved bearings have considerably lower noise level than ball bearings and have better stability compared to plain journal bearings at concentric operating position. However, herringbone-grooved patterns are difficult to manufacture because groove depth is of …