A study is presented of the dynamics of an articulated system of cylinders in confined axial flow. The articulated system is composed of rigid cylindrical segments, interconnected by rotational springs; it is cantilevered, hanging vertically in the centre of a cylindrical pipe, with fluid flowing downwards in the narrow annular passage. For sufficiently high flow velocity, the system generally loses stability sequentially by divergence (pitchfork bifurcation) and flutter (Hopf bifurcation). Once this occurs, the articulated system interacts with the outer pipe, which acts as a constraint to free motions. In the present study, which is mainly concened with possible chaotic motions in this system, the analytical model is highly simplified. Thus, motions are considered to be planar, and the equations of the articulated system are taken to be linear, other than the terms associated with interaction with the outer pipe, which is modelled by either a trilinear or a cubic spring. A linear eigenvalue analysis is first undertaken, and then the nonlinear behaviour of the constrained model is explored numerically for systems of two and three articulations. Phase-plane plots, power spectral densities and bifurcation diagrams indicate in some cases a clear period-doubling cascade leading to chaos, while in others chaos arises via the quasiperiodic route. Poincaré maps and Lyapunov exponent calculations confirm the existence of chaos. Some analytical work is also presented, involving centre manifold theory, in which the post-Hopf limit-cycle amplitude is calculated and compared with that obtained numerically.