10 Most Insane Engines Of All Time

when it comes to engines we all know that bigger is better and throughout history the need for bigger and more powerful engines created some of the world's most awe-inspiring designs ever seen some of which evolved into incredibly powerful engines that have numbers that boggle the imagination ever wondered what powers the biggest planes trains and automobiles from huge jet engines rockets and even the biggest ship engine you'll ever see check out and enjoy these ten biggest engines of all time world's most powerful turbofan engines you're looking at the GE 90 engine which debuted back in 1995 aboard a British Airways 777 passenger jet not only is it the world's most powerful turbofan engine ever built but it was commercial Aviation's first ever engine to utilize carbon fiber composite fan blades early models of the engine produced outputs of seventy four thousand and ninety four thousand pounds of thrust but GE continued to improve on the GE 90 design with larger variants the 110 B and the 115 B which were exclusively built for Boeing's largest 777 aircraft the composite fan blades on this monster jet engine measure more than four feet long but each one weighs less than 50 pounds each blade is made of a combination of carbon fiber and a toughened epoxy matrix that gives it double the strength at one-third less the weight than titanium with each engine having twenty-one blades each GE 90 weighs 18,000 298 pounds and is 18 feet long and 11.25 feet in diameter and boy we're not kidding when we say this engine is powerful during certification testing done in 2002 a GE 91 15 B engine set a world record by producing a whopping 127 thousand pounds of thrust not only that but the engine showed its true reliability by running 60 straight hours at triple redline conditions maximum fan speed core speed and exhaust gas temperature without failing GE 9x the world's largest jet engine the GE 90 has stood as the largest and most powerful jet engine for some time and while it is still the most power fold there is another jet engine that recently entered the testing phase that is even bigger this is the GE 9x and it is the biggest turbine engine in the world and as nearly as wide as a Boeing 737 fuselage the engine is destined to power the Boeing 777x and uses the same carbon fiber composite technology of the GE 90 with a fan stretching 11.1 feet in diameter but having only 14 composite blades the engine is tucked into a 14 and a half foot nacelle and is so big that it needs to be specially mounted on the wing to allow for enough ground clearance not only that but in preparation for the flight GE had to remove six foot wing extensions from the 747 test plane to reduce the wingspan to just over 195 feet stiffening the wing to supports the weight of this giant engine the GE 9x is in the 100 thousand pound thrust class and even though it's bigger than the GE 90 the latter still holds that most powerful jet engine record largest mass-produced aviation piston engine aircraft piston engines are mostly a relic from the past since jet engines have taken over but pratt & whitney was known for having the most mass produced engine which at the time was the largest and most complicated piston engine produced in mass quantity in the United States the engine had 28 cylinders which were in four rows of seven cylinders each and they are arranged in a spiral for better cooling it was called the r40 360 and was known by its commercial designation as the wasp major the radial engine mainly powered large American military aircraft including the Boeing C 97 the Douglas C 124 the Fairchild C 119 transports along with the Boeing be 50 and consolidated b-36 bombers the wasp major was on so many military aircraft that it's not surprising that it was mass-produced early versions of the engine produced around 3,000 horsepower for the later models ended up producing 4,300 horsepower but jet engines would come along and make radial piston engines obsolete the largest radial aero engine the Lightning XR 77 55 was the largest piston aircraft engine ever built in the nighted states it had 36 cylinders which totaled around 127 liters of displacement keep in mind most car engines never get past 3.0 litres and you'll understand just how big this engine was the XR 77-55 had its first run in 1944 and it put out 5,000 horsepower which was incredible during the time the interesting thing about this engine was that it was originally intended to be used in a European bomber the Convair b-36 the resulting design used nine banks of four cylinders each which were arranged around a central crankshaft with each cylinder Bank at a 40 degree angle to each adjacent bank this formed the four row radial engine however unlike most radial engines which were arranged in a spiral to allow air to cool the engine the AR 77-55 was water-cooled and each of the cylinder heads in a bank was in line with a cooling jacket but the original XR 77-55 one design would have to drive a single propeller and even on the largest aircraft the propeller needed to absorb the power would have had to be ridiculously large by the time lycoming had things looking good the US Air Force had lost all interest in piston designs due to the introduction of jet engines and only two of these engines were ever produced the largest steam locomotive engine moving on from planes to trains the Union Pacific Railroad's 4000 class better known as the big boy is an articulated 488 for simple expansion steam locomotive which was built between 1941 to 1944 it was specifically designed for heavy and fast wartime Freight duty on the Union Pacific's main line between Cheyenne Wyoming and Salt Lake City Utah there were 25 big boys in all that served in numbered yupi number four thousand to four thousand twenty-four it was during World War Two in the 1940s that railroads in the US were in dire need of larger steam locomotives to deliver long and heavy trains and the big boy was the locomotive built for the job the big boy had a wheelbase of 72 feet and a total length of around 85 feet long making it one of the longest and largest steam locomotives ever Bill tractive effort was just over one at 35,000 pounds of force making them truly powerful machines these locomotives stayed in service until 1959 when diesel engines were becoming more popular largest diesel engine speaking of diesel engines we move on to the BMW 2000 and this thing is a giant of a diesel engine installed an HC Oersted power station in Denmark it is so big that the building it is in had to be built around it the BMW 2000 is a double-acting two-stroke engine that was put into operation back in 1933 and for more than 30 years it stood as the world's largest diesel engine and was designed to supply power to the capitol of copenhagen at times when the electricity grid was under the most pressure the engine measures 80 feet long 41 feet tall and weighs a massive 1400 tons with the crankshaft weighing 140 tons by itself even though it was huge it has only eight cylinders but consumes 40 tons of lubricating oil no displacement figure is available but the engine is said to be capable of producing twenty-two thousand five hundred base horsepower the engine ran for thirty years until in the late 60s and in 2004 it was disconnected from the electrical grid however the engine is still started on the first and third Saturday of every month and on special occasions so if you want to see this one in action head over to Denmark and let us know if you've seen this one in person the largest industrial turbine engine there are lots of really big industrial engines out there and some of the biggest industrial turbines are designed for use in nuclear power stations converting steam into electricity enter the GE 1750 and we Arabelle turbine generator ge built these massive steam turbines that put out seven hundred to one thousand nine hundred megawatts in fifty and sixty Hertz cycles and they can be adapted to any heat sink conditions and there was a reason these are used in many nuclear power plants around the world at the end of 2018 g e--'s Arabelle met the conditions for commercial operation at Tai Shan nuclear power plant in Guangdong Province in China it now delivers 1,750 megawatts of co2 free energy which is enough to power two million homes in fact the steam turbine in tyshaun holds the world record for being the largest industrial turbine engine at 236 feet long that's comparable to an a380 Airbus with its four modules and talk about reliability the Arabelle steam engines have demonstrated a reliability rate of 99.9 6% for more than 400,000 operating hours the largest rocket engine standing at 363 feet tall and measuring 33 feet in diameter and having a total mass of 6.5 million pounds the Saturn 5 rocket was the biggest rocket ever made in the world today it remains the tallest heaviest and most powerful rocket brought into operational status because of this it also holds the heaviest and largest payload capacity taken into low-earth orbit which was 310 thousand pounds many companies and great minds came together on this one including Wernher von Braun and Arthur Rudolph at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville Alabama Boeing North American Aviation Douglas Aircraft Company and IBM were the lead contractors the Rockets first stage had a power output of 10 million two hundred thousand pounds feet of thrust with a second stage producing three million 160,000 pounds of thrust and a final orbital insertion stage of 360 thousand pounds feet of thrust to date this Saturn 5 rocket remains the only launch vehicle to carry humans past low-earth orbit and if you're curious about project cost it costs 6.4 billion dollars by the time this program was over and cost 185 million dollars for a single launch the largest car engine of all time by now many of you are probably wondering what the largest car engine of all time is that would be the Fiat s 76 which was later renamed the Fiat 300 HP record because it was specifically designed to beat the land speed record which was at the time held by Blitzen Benz it was a four-cylinder engine that had a displacement of 1720 inches that's around 28 liter and it produced 286 horsepower at 1900 rpm which was insane considering the year of its design the car it was put in was also known as the Beast of Turin and two of the cars were built one of these was sold to the Russian Prince Boris al Knopf in 1911 and it ended up in Australia where it crashed and the second one was kept by Fiat and was scrapped in 1920 via Stella's OOP Sir Archie a 96 see if you've not seen the engines that power some of the largest ships in the world then we introduce you to the finished yüksel Azusa r/t a 96 C it is the largest reciprocating engine in the world and is capable of producing 108 thousand 920 base horsepower in fact it's so big that just the crankshaft in this engine weighs a mass of 300 tons because of its sheer size the engine runs only at 22 to 102 RPM but it consumes almost 40 barrels of oil in an hour meaning it costs around $35 a minute to keep running the engine can be configured to power any size of container ships from 6 to 14 cylinders its largest 14 cylinder version is 44 feet high 87 feet long and weighs over two thousand three hundred tons dry and produces 107 390 horsepower that's about five million one hundred sixty two thousand nine hundred thirty four pounds of feet of torque seeing this thing rolling out of the shop on a trailer is a jaw-dropping experience we hope you enjoyed the video which one of these engines did you think was the most awesome let us know in the comments and if you liked the video then don't forget to subscribe and turn on notifications so you'll be the first to know when a new video arrives thanks for watching and we'll see you next time

Channel: Interesting Facts

Views: 278,842

Rating: 4.7292352 out of 5

Keywords: most insane engines, engine, engines, top 10, top 5, best, list, top 10 engines, engineering, biggest engines, most powerful engines, biggest engine in the world, insane engine swaps, engine swap, biggest engines of all time, diesel, diesel engine, diesel power, 2jz, 2jz gte, powerful engines

Id: gXeBQrio4Uo

Length: 12min 49sec (769 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 17 2019