High air-bearing stiffness slider design

In order to increase highly the AB stiffness and AP, a dual shallow step structure in a slider is explored. It proved that the dual shallow step structure-increases the air bearing stiffness and the AP on the head area significantly. The structure of central trailing pad is found to have much higher influences on the AB stiffness and AP than the other pads. Optimizing the structure of central trailing pad in the dual shallow step structure slider can further increase the AB stiffness and AP. Finally, the optimized dual shallow step structure slider has much higher AB stiffness and much greater AP on the head area than the normal single shallow step slider. Therefore, the flying stability of the slider with optimized dual shallow step structure should be better.