Chris the VisioGuy recently came up with Radial Sankey Diagrams. Although he didn’t seem to be sure if there is a “need for radially-oriented Sankey diagrams”, the commentators of his post immediately came up with ideas: use for rotating or radiating processes, cigarette rolling, recursive industrial processes, reinvestments, and so on… even stellar nuclear reactions were mentioned.

This is the ‘Everything Radial’ Circular Sankey Diagram

“Everything Radial” Circular Sankey Diagram by Chris Roth (Visio Guy). Shown on his blog at http://www.visguy.com/2009/05/08/radial-sankey-diagrams/

… and this is the ‘Tangential Fly-off’ Circular Sankey Diagram

“Tangential Fly-off” Circular Sankey Diagram by Chris Roth (Visio Guy). Shown on his blog at http://www.visguy.com/2009/05/08/radial-sankey-diagrams/

One concern seems to be that the proportional arrow magnitude doesn’t work that well, since the human eye perceives the arrow area rather than thickness in such a circular Sankey diagram.

Thanks VisisoGuy for this contribution to the big basket of Sankey diagrams