Quote:
Originally Posted by mechman600
Compound turbos do it mechanically through a gear set. The DD16 in my link above does, as did all the WWII airplane engines.
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Sure, it CAN be done that way, at the cost of adding weight, complexity, and wear/failure points. That might not matter much for combat aircraft - after all, the average service life of a B-17 in combat was something like 4 months.
The amusing part is the research done after the war to discover the most efficient size of turbocharger for a given piston engine. Turned out the optimum was to reduce the size of the engine to zero.