The strongest rotating rod

By using the Rayleigh quotient, we present the variational formulation for the strongest rotating rod stable against buckling. This variational formulation is converted to fifth-order singular non-linear boundary value problem. The optimal shape and the critical rotating speed are determined with special numerical–analytical integration procedure. We found the explicit linear relation between the volume and the squared critical speed. Although, in general, the linear stability problem for the optimal rotating rod does not have purely discrete spectra, we show that in the present case, the critical speed is determined with lowest eigenvalue. This fact verifies our optimization strategy based on a linear spectral problem.