Control system development of hard disk drives with an energy storage mechanism

2018 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 16K14282
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Research Field: Control engineering/System engineering
• Research Institution: Utsunomiya University
• Principal Investigator: Mitsuo Hirata 宇都宮大学, 工学部, 教授 (50282447)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 鈴木 雅康 宇都宮大学, 工学部, 助教 (10456692)
• Research Collaborator: USUI Syunsuke ; FUKUDA Masahiro ; TAMEKUNI Kohta ; TAKIZAWA Yuya
• Project Period (FY): 2016-04-01 – 2019-03-31
• Keywords: ハードディスク装置 / エネルギー回生 / 制振軌道設計 / 終端状態制御 / PWM型入力系

Outline of Final Research Achievements

The number of hard disk drives (HDDs) in the world is rapidly increasing combined with the spread use of cloud systems, and the energy consumption by HDDs cannot be ignored. Therefore, the reduction of the energy consumption of HDDs will have a big impact on society. Thus, this research focused on the control problem of HDDs with an energy storage mechanism. The positioning system of HDD has mechanical vibration modes at high frequency, and the positioning trajectory must be designed to reduce not only energy consumption but also residual vibration. This research used a final-state control method to design the trajectory considering the tradeoff between the energy consumption and damping performance. The effectiveness of the proposed method was evaluated by conducting experiments using a two-mass spring system, which is a simple model of HDDs, and we showed that the effect of the energy reduction was increased when we used the vibration minimized trajectory.

Free Research Field

制御工学

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

HDDの消費電力は近い将来原発数百基分に膨れ上がるとの試算もある。そのため，消費電力を数％低減できただけでも，相当大きな削減となる。さらに，本研究で得られた成果は，工場などで24時間操業される工作機械など，各種産業機器の消費電力削減にも有効である。このように，本研究の成果は低炭素社会の実現に大きく貢献できる。