Paper Title
A Study on Natural Frequencies of Spherical Viral Shells
Abstract
A refined elastic shell model is used to study the effect of high structural heterogeneity on natural frequencies of
spherical viral shells. With this model, the structural heterogeneity of a spherical viral shell is characterized by an effective
bending thickness (which can be quite different from the average thickness) and the transverse shear modulus (which can be
much lower than the in-plane shear modulus). The results show that actual natural frequencies of spheroidal modes of a
spherical viral shell can be much lower than those predicted by the classical homogeneous shell model, although natural
frequencies of torsional modes are close to those predicted by the classical model. For example, with physically realistic
parameters for virus capsid STMV, the natural frequencies of spheroidal modes predicted by the present model are about
30-50% lower than those predicted by the classical model, in better agreement with known simulation results. These results
suggest that the refined shell model could offer a relatively simple model to calculate natural frequencies of spherical viral
shells of high structural heterogeneity.
Keywords - Natural Frequency, Spherical Viral Shells, Structural Heterogeneity, Thickness Nonuniformity