The aqueous viscous drag of a contracting open surface.

A problem for fluid flow around an axisymmetric spherical surface with a hole is presented to characterize pore dynamics in liposomes. A rotational stream function for the contraction of a punctured plane region is obtained and is used in the perturbation expansion for a stream function in the case of a spherical surface with a hole of small radius compared to the spherical radius. The Rayleigh dissipation function is calculated and used to infer the aqueous friction induced by the contraction of the hole. The theoretical aqueous friction coefficient is compared with one derived from experimental data, and they are in agreement.