JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 99, 08N106 共2006兲

Viscoelastic liquid bearing modeling via lattice Boltzmann method

Woo Tae Kim, Haigang Chen, and Myung S. Jhona兲
Department of Chemical Engineering and Data Storage Systems Center, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000
Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213
共Presented on 2 November 2005; published online 26 April 2006兲
As the need for higher areal recording density in hard disk drives 共HDDs兲 requires continuous
reduction of the fly height in head-disk interface, the tribological issues become critical during
operation. In viscoelastic liquid bearing 共VLB兲 technology, thin liquid films instead of air bearing
are used for lubrication. In this paper, we developed a computational tool based on lattice
Boltzmann method 共LBM兲, which is accurate, fast, robust, and highly parallelizable, for the accurate
modeling of a non-Newtonian ultrathin liquid film undergoing extremely high shear rates. We
adopted truncated power-law and the Bird-Carreau models to take into account the shear rate
dependent viscosity via the relaxation time in our LBM scheme. After the feasibility study of the
pressure driven microchannel, the pressure and flow fields under the model slider were calculated
for different constitutive relationships. Together with the order of magnitude analyses, our LBM
simulations, using a physically realistic viscoelastic constitutive equation, will provide accurate
predictions on VLB drive used in HDDs. © 2006 American Institute of Physics.
关DOI: 10.1063/1.2176325兴
INTRODUCTION equation similar to the standard Reynolds equation. In the
magnetic recording area, Elsharkawy6 performed the numeri-
A major thrust in the magnetic storage industry is the cal simulations of the ultrathin hydrodynamic liquid lubrica-
adoption of contact or pseudocontact recording as a means of tion of the slider/disk interface using the finite difference
increasing the storage density on hard disk drives. An alter- scheme. Peck et al.7 provided the important design criteria
native to achieve this is known as the VISqUS 共Ref. 1兲 tech- for viscoelastic liquid bearing 共VLB兲 disk drive with quali-
nology, where the slider is immersed in a non-Newtonian tative analysis using the generalized Newtonian fluid. Hsiao
fluid covering the magnetic media. The drive operation re- et al.,2,8 using the “averaged viscosity across the film” con-
sults in the formation of an ultrathin hydrodynamic liquid cept, evaluated a two-dimensional 共2D兲 isoviscous Reynolds
bearing with a film thickness on the order of nanometers.2 equation with a separate treatment in shear thinning and ther-
Such a liquid lubrication, in principle, can achieve high areal mal thinning effects in the head-disk interface 共HDI兲.
density and has a very “stiff” bearing, high shock resistance In this paper, we present the lattice Boltzmann
and low coefficients of stiction/friction. Furthermore, the method9,10 共LBM兲 to solve a liquid lubrication problem. Our
adoption of liquid bearing extends the life of the head by approach incorporates the characteristics of shear thinning of
suppressing the direct contact between the head and the disk. non-Newtonian fluids. The shear rate dependent viscosity
Although the use of liquid lubrication presents means to was taken into account via the relaxation time. The tempera-
achieve contact recording, many problems remain unsolved ture and pressure effects on viscosity can be taken into ac-
concerning the non-Newtonian behavior of such a liquid lu- count by using the empirical relationship11 together with the
bricant. As one may expect, the shear rate of this liquid lu- energy equation.
brication can easily reach values on the order of 108 s−1 due
to the ultrathin film thickness. In this ultrahigh shear rate LIQUID BEARING MODELING
regime, shear thinning could become extremely important in
The schematic of a HDI used in liquid bearing analysis
addition to the thermal thinning.
is shown in Fig. 1. The slider is free to move about a pivot-
Some preliminary studies on both the characteristics of
ing point 共pp兲 in the vertical direction and can rotate about
non-Newtonian fluids and the effects of the temperature rise
the pitch 共␪兲 and roll 共␾兲 axes, and hm is the fly height of the
have been conducted with various levels of assumptions. For
trailing edge. A non-Newtonian liquid lubricant is fully
example, Zhang et al.3 developed a viscosity modification
flooded between slider and disk interface.
model which can be applied to the thin film lubrication prob-
lems in isothermal and incompressible conditions. Wang and
Zhang4 solved the thermal elastohydrodynamic lubrication
problem for simplified viscoplastic fluid model by using the
perturbation method. Yang and Wen,5 assigning all the non-
Newtonian effects of the lubricant to a set of functions called
the equivalent viscosity, obtained a generalized Reynolds

a兲
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; FAX: 共412兲 268-
7139; electronic mail: mj3a@andrew.cmu.edu FIG. 1. Schematic of a HDI with air/liquid bearing.

0021-8979/2006/99共8兲/08N106/3/$23.00 99, 08N106-1 © 2006 American Institute of Physics

08N106-2 Kim, Chen, and Jhon
The governing equation for the stress distribution under-
neath the bearing surface of a slider is derived from the equa-
tion of motion using the lubrication approximation and con-
servation of mass. Conventional bearings operate in an
ambient air environment and theoretical modeling is well
established, while the liquid bearing drives use a non-
Newtonian liquid for the lubrication layer. The local velocity
profile, vx and vy, can be expressed in terms of the normal-
ized nth moment of fluidity, ⌫n共z兲 共Ref. 7兲. This velocity
profile can be integrated across the film thickness to yield an
equation which determines the pressure or normal stress
component
冕冋h
0
⳵␳ ⳵共␳vx兲 ⳵共␳vy兲
⳵t
+
⳵x
+
⳵y
册
dz = 0, 共1兲
where ␳ is the fluid density. For Newtonian fluids 共such as
nonconfined air兲, the position-dependent viscosity ␩ is ho-
mogeneous over the entire film, and the classical Reynolds
equation is obtained. For non-Newtonian fluids, the apparent
viscosity depends on the shear rate, which is a function of
position and velocity. This adds an extra complexity to the
formulation of a closed-form Reynolds type of equation.
Moreover, due to a very high shear rate in the HDI, the
viscous heating effects can no longer be ignored and the
energy equation must be examined. Together with an accu-
rate specification of thermal boundary conditions, the energy
equation provides heat transfer characteristics. The fluid
flows are coupled with the energy equation owing to the fact
that the non-Newtonian viscosity, ␩ is temperature depen-
dent, and the viscous dissipation function is dependent on ␩.
The increase of temperature leads to thermal thinning. The
temperature and pressure effects on viscosity can be taken
into account by using empirical correlations 共e.g., Roelands’
relationship11兲. The finite element method is typically em-
ployed to examine complex geometries such as sliders or
surface roughness. Although numerical solution of the gov-
erning equations is possible, a simple order-of-magnitude
analysis on a load bearing capacity and power consumption
in liquid bearing drives can capture most of the essential
dependencies on the operating parameters and fluid proper-
ties. Though order-of-magnitude equations given by Peck et
al.7 appear simple, they can provide qualitative design crite-
ria for VLB. In addition to this useful information, we will
pursue a quantitative analysis of VLB problems.
LATTICE BOLTZMANN METHOD
We will introduce LBM to simulate the generalized
Newtonian fluid flows in VLB. The LBM is a versatile nu-
merical tool for simulating fluid flows containing complex
physics phenomena.9 The LBM provides numerous advan-
tages, including clear physical pictures, an inherently tran-
sient nature, multiscale simulation capabilities, and fully par-
allel algorithms. One of the numerical advantages of LBM is
that physically observable quantities can be written in terms
of simple sums that, at most, depend on nearest neighbor
information.
We first introduce the standard LBM for isothermal flow.
The discrete particle distribution function f i共x , t兲, which is
J. Appl. Phys. 99, 08N106 共2006兲
the probability of finding a particle with the velocity ci at
共x , t兲, defined at each lattice node is updated after each time
step ⌬t according to the following evolution equations:
1
f i共x + ci⌬t,t + ⌬t兲 = f i共x,t兲 − 关f i共x,t兲 − f eq
i 共x,t兲兴, 共2兲
␶
where 共i = 1 , . . . , 9兲. Here, f eq
i 共x , t兲 is the discrete equilibrium
distribution function given as
冋 册
3共ci · v兲 9共ci · v兲2 3共v · v兲
i 共x,t兲 = wi␳ 1 +
f eq + −
c2 2c4 2c2
with w1 = 4/9, w2 = w3 = w4 = w5 = 1/9, 共3兲
and w6 = w7 = w8 = w9 = 1/36,
where c ⬅ ⌬s / ⌬t = 冑3kBT / m is the particle speed moving be-
tween a lattice node and its nearest neighbors, v is the fluid
velocity, ⌬s is the lattice spacing, kB is Boltzmann constant,
T is the fluid temperature, and m is the particle mass. The
nine discrete velocities are given by the D2Q9 scheme. The ␳
and v are calculated by
1
␳共x,t兲 = 兺 f i and v共x,t兲 = 兺 ci f i .
共4兲
i ␳ i
Due to uniformity of the lattice, the standard LBM is
usually applied to simple geometries. However, in our VLB
applications, we need to consider complex slider geometries.
To facilitate the general geometry handling capabilities, we
adopted the Taylor series expansion and least squares-based
LBM 共TLLBM兲 共Ref. 12兲 which is a meshless approach for
simulation of flows in complex geometry. TLLBM explicitly
updates the distribution functions at mesh points by an alge-
braic formulation, in which the relevant coefficients are cal-
culated from the coordinates of mesh points before main
computation starts. In LBM formulation for the noslip, in-
compressible, laminar flows, ␶ is typically chosen as ␶
Ⲑ
= ␩ / ␳ m kBT + ⌬t / 2. To incorporate the shear rate dependent
viscosity, ␶ was properly calculated from the chosen gener-
alized Newtonian fluid model. Via coupling with the energy
equation and incorporation of the temperature dependence, ␶
can also be used for thermal VLB simulation. To illustrate
the non-Newtonian fluid behavior, we adopted the truncated
power-law model,13
␩ = ␩⬘共␥˙ /␥˙ c兲n−1 for ␥˙ ⬎ ␥˙ c and ␩ = ␩⬘ for ␥˙ 艋 ␥˙ c , 共5兲
where ␩⬘ is the zero-shear-rate viscosity, n is the power-law
exponent, and ␥˙ c is the critical shear rate ␥˙ is the shear rate.
If n ⬍ 1, the fluid is described as “pseudoplastic” or “shear
thinning” and applicable to VLB technology. The Bird-
Carreau model13 is also adopted to take advantage of suffi-
cient flexibility to fit most shear thinning data including the
perfluoropolyether lubricant,
␩ = ␩⬁ + 共␩0 − ␩⬁兲关1 + 共␭␥˙ 兲2兴共n−1兲/2 . 共6兲
Here, ␩0 is the zero-shear-rate viscosity, ␩⬁ is the infinite-
shear-rate viscosity, and ␭ is the characteristic time. In our
VLB simulations, we adopted a model fluid with ␩⬘
= 0.1 Pa s, ␩0 = 0.2 Pa s, ␥˙ c = 102 s−1, ␩⬁ = 0 Pa s, ␭ = 2 s, and
␳ = 1000 kg/ m3.
08N106-3 Kim, Chen, and Jhon
FIG. 2. Velocity profiles in the pressure driven channel flow.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
To illustrate the capabilities of our LBM methodology,
we simulated the 2D microchannel flow which is formed by
two parallel plates and driven by the pressure difference be-
tween the inlet and outlet. The length and height of the chan-
nel is chosen as 250⫻ 25 nm2. The upper and bottom solid
wall and pressure boundaries at the inlet and outlet are im-
posed using the method proposed by Zou and He.14 Figure 2
shows the normalized velocity profiles for various n with the
pressure ratio, Pr = 1.01, between the inlet and the outlet. Our
model predicted the shear thinning behavior accurately for
generalized Newtonian fluid models.
Although our LBM is suitable for sliders with various
geometries, we only examined a 2D slider in this paper for
the feasibility study. Note that extension to three-dimensional
共3D兲 geometry is a straightforward procedure via using the
various merits of TLLBM scheme. The dummy slider geom-
etry is chosen as a length of L = 4 mm and hm = 25 nm. The
disk is operated at angular velocity of 3600 rpm and the
velocity at pivoting point is 15 m / s, i.e., Vx = 15 m / s. The
slider has a pitch angle of 80 ␮rad. Figure 3 shows the nor-
malized isothermal pressure profiles for the Newtonian fluid
which has a viscosity of 0.1 Pa· s and truncated power-law
fluid with n = 0.9. Only a slight amount of non-Newtonian
reduction in the pressure occurs near the inlet. The influence
of shear thinning on the pressure profile is not so strong for
this selected non-Newtonian fluid. Without the taper region
near the inlet, there appears to be a relatively high-pressure
buildup only in the trailing edge for both lubricants. One of
FIG. 3. Normalized pressure profiles for a 2D slider geometry.
J. Appl. Phys. 99, 08N106 共2006兲
FIG. 4. Shear stress profiles for a 2D slider geometry.
the advantages of present algorithm is the direct calculation
of stress field. The wall shear stresses that determine the
friction force or power consumption of drives are of critical
importance in liquid bearing. Figure 4 shows the isothermal
shear stress profiles. As the spacing decreases from leading
to trailing edge, the shear rate increases rapidly. For the case
of the truncated power-law fluid, the shear stress is an order
of magnitude less than the Newtonian case due to the shear
thinning property. However, the shear strain values at both
disk surface and slider surface did not show any difference
due to the simple converging geometry of the given liquid
bearing.
CONCLUSION
We illustrated a feasibility study of the LBM which can
predict the liquid bearing performances. TLLBM, which is
suitable for the study of complex geometries, was adopted to
analyze the viscoelastic liquid bearing. Our approach can be
extended to the advanced liquid bearing design or hybrid
bearing 共air and lubricant兲 by considering complex geom-
etries, thermal thinning effects, and multiphase modeling.
The LBM can enhance accuracy and numerical efficiency of
the advanced HDI modeling since it has a capability of cal-
culating stress profile directly and can naturally implement
boundary conditions such as air and lubricant.
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