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:
or
Both of these surfaces are asymptotic to the cone of equation
One has an hyperboloid of revolution if and only if Otherwise, the axes are uniquely defined (up to the exchange of the x-axis and the y-axis.