In geometry, a hyperboloid of revolution, sometimes called circular hyperboloid, is a surface that may be generated by rotating a hyperbola around one of its principal axes. An hyperboloid is a surface that may be obtained from a paraboloid of revolution by deforming it by means of directional scalings, or more generally, of an affine transformation.
A hyperboloid is a quadric surface, that is a surface that may be defined as the zero set of a polynomial of degree two in three variables. Among quadric surfaces, a hyperboloid is characterized by not being a cone or a cylinder, having a center of symmetry, and intersecting many planes into hyperbolas. A hyperboloid has also three pairwise perpendicular axes of symmetry, and three pairwise perpendicular planes of symmetry.
Given a hyperboloid, if one chooses a Cartesian coordinate system whose axes are axes of symmetry of the hyperboloid, and origin is the center of symmetry of the hyperboloid, then the hyperboloid may be defined by one of the two following equations:
x
2
a
2
+
y
2
b
2
−
z
2
c
2
=
1
,
{\displaystyle {x^{2} \over a^{2}}+{y^{2} \over b^{2}}-{z^{2} \over c^{2}}=1,}
or
x
2
a
2
+
y
2
b
2
−
z
2
c
2
=
−
1.
{\displaystyle {x^{2} \over a^{2}}+{y^{2} \over b^{2}}-{z^{2} \over c^{2}}=-1.}
Both of these surfaces are asymptotic to the cone of equation
x
2
a
2
+
y
2
b
2
−
z
2
c
2
=
0.
{\displaystyle {x^{2} \over a^{2}}+{y^{2} \over b^{2}}-{z^{2} \over c^{2}}=0.}
One has an hyperboloid of revolution if and only if
a
2
=
b
2
.
{\displaystyle a^{2}=b^{2}.}
Otherwise, the axes are uniquely defined (up to the exchange of the x-axis and the y-axis.
There are two kinds of hyperboloids. In the first case (+1 in the right-hand side of the equation), one has a one-sheet hyperboloid, also called hyperbolic hyperboloid. It is a connected surface, which has a negative Gaussian curvature at every point. This implies that the tangent plane at any point intersect the hyperboloid into two lines, and thus that the one-sheet hyperboloid is a doubly ruled surface.
In the second case (−1 in the right-hand side of the equation), one has a two-sheet hyperboloid, also called elliptic hyperboloid. The surface has two connected components, and a positive Gaussian curvature at every point. Thus the surface is convex in the sense that the tangent plane at every point intersects the surface only in this point.