Damping by bulk and shear viscosity for confined acoustic phonons of a spherical virus in water

Abstract

A sphere-like virus in water is modeled as a homogeneous isotropic elastic continuum sphere in contact with an infinite viscous compressible Newtonian fluid. The frequencies and damping of the confined vibrational modes of the sphere are calculated for the material parameters of a virus in water. While the effects of viscosity are found to be negligible for a virus-like sphere of macroscopic size, for nanoscale viruses both the frequency and damping of the vibrational modes are significantly affected by the viscosity of the water. Furthermore, both shear viscosity and bulk viscosity play an important role.