Elastic contact with a “donut”-shaped asperity

The laser-textured surfaces used for the touchdown area of computer hard-disks are sometimes covered with asperities consisting of a crater surrounded by a raised rim; contact with the read-head takes place over the rim of the crater, colloquially referred to as a “donut”. In order to analyse the load/compliance relation or the stiction to be expected in contact of hard disks, a number of authors have proposed load/compliance relations for contact between such a single doughnut and a plane, usually as simple modifications of the Hertz line contact equations. In this note simple, asymptotically correct, relations for a ring asperity are derived and verified by direct solutions. In particular, the relation between elastic deflection and load is approximately δ=(W/π2RE∗)[ln(16R/b)+0.5)].