Study on the reduction of flow-induced noise through the suppression of vortex shedding at rotating disk edge

Abstract

We conducted a computational analysis to better understand the coherent flow structure that arises when the rotation of a disk drive generates flow-induced noise. We set the flow domain to be similar to the actual shape of the flow in Blu-ray disks and examined the phenomena of vortex generation and shedding at the disk edge, focusing on the source of the noise. Our results showed that disk edge vortex shedding was the primary cause of disk-drive-flow-induced noise; therefore, we investigated the technique of lowering the intensity of a disk edge vortex to reduce this noise. We attached concentric projections onto the cover of the disk to suppress the flow returning to the center of the disk through the gap between the disk and cover. Noise induced by disk rotation was reduced by 2.68 dB at the optimal setting: projections 0.002 m wide and 0.006 m width between the projections (and thus a ratio of 1: 3).