CFD Investigation of Damper Plate Effect on Air Flow in High Speed Rotation Hard Disk Drive by Using K-E with a Partial Model

In HDD air flow simulation, the well known LES turbulent model requires large computing times and resources, including CPU, RAM and storage intensive which is not appropriate when using various variables. The effect of an air damper is studied by the k-e model with a reduced boundary due to the lower number of equations, computing time and computer resources. Firstly the RMS velocities of a partial model are compared between LES and k-e and then the reduced boundary models are compared with the partial model. The RMS velocity errors of the partial model compared with LES and k-e are less than 6 %. The mean RMS velocity errors compared with the reduced boundary model and the partial model are 3.93% at ID and 2.12% at MD position while the OD position increased to 26.5% because there is no effect from a return flow from the flex bracket and voice coil zone. Computing time of the reduced boundary and k-e model is reduced by 68.4%. In primary HDD air flow analysis, the k-e method together with a reduced model can be used to predict the effect of an air damper.