In continuum mechanics, viscous damping is a formulation of the damping phenomena, in which the source of damping force is modeled as a function of the volume, shape, and velocity of an object traversing through a real fluid with viscosity.
This may be affected by fluid flow or motion of magnetic structures.
In a single-degree-of-freedom system, viscous damping model relates force to velocity as shown below:
is the viscous damping coefficient with SI units of
This model adequately describes the damping force on a body that is moving at a moderate speed through a fluid.