We've all seen what happens in a laundry washer when it becomes unbalanced and starts thumping and shaking around violently.

What needs to be done to prevent the same from happening in a spacecraft centrifuge in which astronauts will live and do their work (especially if they move around and dynamically changes the balance)? Would unbalancing be so severe as to shake a spacecraft apart?

(grin) It kind of makes me wonder what would happen if that centrifuge aboard that ship in 2001 A Space Odyssey gets unbalanced.. Bad enough to have an unbalanced computer (heh heh) let alone a centrifuge..