In this work, the continuity and momentum equations have been solved numerically to investigate the flow of power-law fluids over a rotating cylinder In particular, consideration has been given to the prediction of drag and lift coefficients as functions of the pertinent governing dimensionless parameters. namely, power-law index (1 >= n >= 0.2), dimensionless rotational velocity (0 <= alpha <= 6) and the Reynolds number (0 1 <= Re <= 40) Over the range of Reynolds number, the flow is known to be steady Detailed streamline and vorticity contours adjacent to the rotating cylinder and surface pressure profiles provide further insights into the nature of flow Finally, the paper is concluded by comparing the present numerical results with the scant experimental data on velocity profiles in the vicinity of a rotating cylinder available in the literature The correspondence is seen to be excellent for Newtonian and inelastic fluids (c) 2010 Elsevier B V All rights reserved