I. INTRODUCTION
The study of pendulum motion is a classical problem in
physics and understanding the influence of fluid drag on its
decay dates back to Stokes 1. He derived a simple expression
for drag on a sphere at low Reynolds numbers, which
was later expanded on to include the effects of added mass
and other phenomena e.g., Landau and Lifshitz 2.
At low Reynolds numbers, this drag, FD s , can be expressed
as
FD s = 6RsV1 +
Rs
. 1
At larger Reynolds numbers, it is observed that the drag has
an additional component, which is proportional to velocity of
the pendulum squared 2. This drag, FD l , can be expressed as
FD l = CDV2 + FD s . 2
Here, is the viscosity, the density, and = / is the
kinematic viscosity of the fluid surrounding the sphere
whose radius is Rs. V=A is the velocity, A is the amplitude
of the oscillation at frequency f, =2f and =2 / is the
thickness of the boundary layer surrounding the sphere. CD is
a drag coefficient, which is typically empirically fit e.g.,
Gonzalez and Bol 3 and Alexander and Indelicato 4.
More complex expressions for the drag on a sphere that include
acceleration effects can be found e.g., Mordant and
Pinton 5 and Lyotard et al. 6.
We define the Reynolds number as
Re =
2RsV
, 3
The influence of fluid drag has become a topic of great
interest to the quantum fluids community, where studies of
oscillating objects in superfluid environments have been conducted
for a recent review, see Skrbek and Vinen 7. In