Bifurcation from a finitely deformed circular cylindrical configuration of a rotating circular cylindrical elastic membrane is examined. It is found (for a physically realistic choice of elastic strain-energy function) that the angular speed attains a maximum followed by a minimum relative to the increasing radius of the cylinder for either a fixed axial extension or fixed axial force.

At fixed axial extension (a) a prismatic mode of bifurcation (in which the cross-section of the cylinder becomes uniformly non-circular) may occur at a maximum of the angular speed provided the end conditions on the cylinder allow this; (b) axisyim-metric modes may occur before, at or after the angular speed maximum depending on the length of the cylinder and the magnitude of the axial extension; (c) an asymmetric or ‘wobble’ mode is always possible before either (a) or (b) as the angular speed increases from zero for any length of cylinder or axial extension. Moreover, ‘wobble’ occurs at lower angular speeds for longer cylinders.

At fixed axial force the results are similar to (a), (b) and (c) except that an axisym-metric mode necessarily occurs between the turning points of the angular speed.