Free Vibration Analysis of PZT Glide Heads

This paper studies natural frequencies and mode shapes of a glide head with a piezoelectric transducer (PZT) through calibrated experiments and a finite element analysis. In the experiments, the PZT transducer served as an actuator exciting the glide head from 100 kHz to 1.3 MHz, and a laser Doppler vibrometer (LDV) measured displacement of the glide head at the inner or outer rail. The natural frequencies were measured through PZT impedance and frequency response functions from PZT to LDV. In the finite element analysis, the glide head was meshed by brick elements. The finite element results show that there are two types of vibration modes: slider modes and PZT modes. Only the slider modes are important to glide head applications. Moreover, natural frequencies predicted from the finite element analysis agree well with the experimental results within 5% of error. Finally, the finite element analysis identifies four critical slider dimensions whose tolerance will significantly vary the natural frequencies: PZT bonding length, wing thickness, slider thickness, and air bearing recess depth.