Abstract
This paper characterizes the nonlinear dynamic properties of air-bearing slider based on numerical simulation. The FFT spectrum of slider responses is shown to exhibit primary resonance frequency of air-bearing modes, harmonic frequencies, and narrowband and broadband frequencies. The chaos dynamical invariants of the response including largest Lyapunov exponents and K-entropy are examined and evaluated to characterize the nonlinear dynamics properties of the system response. It is found that system response exhibit chaos features under certain conditions. The broadband features of slider response are correlated with the chaotic properties characterized by the specific nonlinear invariants. The analysis provides an insight into the nonlinear dynamic properties of the air-bearing dynamics and control. © 2014 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.