Boundary effects on the drag of an oscillating sphere: Applications to the magnetic sphere rheometer (Q1096478)

The effect of a closed, nearby boundary on the drag of a small, oscillating sphere in an incompressible, linearly viscoelastic medium is studied. Through a perturbation procedure the functional dependence of the drag on the complex oscillatory Reynolds number is determined and shown to differ from that of the unbounded case. These results allow one to account for boundary effects in the determination of the complex viscosity using the magnetic sphere rheometer. This paper is motivated by the rheological study of materials purified in minute quantities such as intracellular proteins, thus the need for small chamber sizes for use with the rheometer and the need for boundary corrections for the drag.