The Rise & Fall of the Radial Airplane Engine - History & Technical

The Radial engine was once the pinnacle of internal combustion engine design, but has gone mostly extinct. What happened? The Radial first ousted the Rotary, then to a large extent the inline engines (V12’s) before the Radial itself was ousted. In this video we briefly go through the history of the radial and we also take a bit of a deep dive into radial engine design and see what made it such a great engine. Follow me on Instagram: Chapters 0:00 The “Magic“ of the Radial 0:21 Humble Beginnings 0:49 The Rotary Engine (Pros) 1:34 The Rotary Engine (Cons) 2:01 The Rise of the Air-cooled Radial 3:02 Basic Radial Engine Design 3:40 Radial Firing Order 4:03 Radial Firing Interval 4:59 Radial Crankshaft 6:17 Radial Valve Operation 6:36 Radial Primary Balance 7:04 Radial Secondary Balance 10:46 Radial Disadvantages 12:13 The Fall of the Radial Airplane Engine 14:03 Post-War Radial Applications 14: