Explained: Afterburners

What are afterburners, and how do they work? In this video, I'll go into some detail on how different parts of the afterburner work, and why they are designed that way.

===== NOTES =====
► I always speak pretty quickly in my videos, so if you need to take it slower, you have the option of slowing down the video speed to 0.75x or even 0.5x the normal speed (I realize that I speak particularly fast in this video).
► Apparently since YouTube got rid of annotations, I have no way of letting you know in the video that I made a mistake, so I'll just have to hope that you read my video descriptions.
► At around 4:49, I say that "droplet evaporation times are higher for higher temperatures". I meant to say that droplet evaporation times are higher for LOWER temperatures, which is why the cold bypass flow takes longer to evaporate droplets. Another way of saying this is that for the same droplet diameter, it will take longer to evaporate in a colder flow than in a hotter flow.

===== RELEVANT VIDEOS =====
→ In a Nutshell: Afterburners

→ Area-Mach Number Relation

===== REFERENCES =====
► "Afterburners" in The Aerothermodynamics of Aircraft Gas Turbine Engines, Zukoski
► Mechanics and Thermodynamics of Propulsion, Hill and Peterson
► Aerothermodynamics of Gas Turbine and Rocket Propulsion, Oates
► Aircraft Propulsion, Farokhi
► Aerospace Propulsion Systems, Ward
► Fundamentals of Jet Propulsion with Applications, Flack

===== THUMBNAIL PHOTO CREDIT =====
By United States Navy, Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Michael D. Cole [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

[Guitarfollower]

To better understand this video, watch at 0.75 speed

[Aglai]

Your video is the 5th from the top of search results and the first one where a real human is explaining, using real words and proper English

[minnesotajack]

When your afterburner test starts in 11 minutes and you didn’t study....

[alessio]

Very informative. This explanation is on the engineering level not just on the fighter pilot level. This explains why afterburners don’t all fire up spontaneously and the g-force on take off increases the longer the jet is on take off roll. That being said it’s very easy for the pilot to exceed landing gear retraction speed. Retracting speed is lower than extended speed.

[armandoorozco]

you might need to stop YOUR afterburners.

[victorescobedo]

Dude. You are awesome. Thanks. I googled "how does an afterburner work" ended up here, and now I know exactly how an afterburner works. Thank you!

[MrAtlantis]

You answered all of my rebuttals the second I questioned anything you were saying 😆 Great job. Thank you.

[rfjlhjs]

now I read all the comments in the tempo of his voice

[charlesnunn]

Amazing simplification and explanation without dumbing it down. I have no previous knowledge of jet engines. Came away from this feeling like I had learned something.

[stackshell]

Love it u talk at a fast and understandable speed. One of the videos I watch at regular

[moogybannahilstopaflingon]

This dude worked on my lawn mower afternit had broken down. It now does a quarter acre block in 3.2 seconds...it's wicked! :-)

[xeorion]

Thank you for your video !
Even for francophone like me, I understand almost all the video with English subtitles.
Even after four years, the quality is not too bad, and mostly I know how works an afterburner !

[artus]

I dont comment so often on youtube, but your video is really good. A lot of valuable information in compact time. Thank you :)

[teddysurf]

That's a lot of information to get in 10 minutes...I'm have to slow it down, lol thanks for the very informative video

[adhithasimhanraghavan]

That is a huge amount of info in a short span. One could make a documentary with this info. Thanks a lot man!

[joro]

Nice and simple explanation for something so complicated.

[maxdavies]

I wanted to know what an afterburner was and I got it thanks.

[climbvx]

Great video, just what I need to write my afterburner report!

[Fallkhar]

I like how you get to the point immediately. The inclusion of the diffuser makes sense but is also kinda counterintuitive. The afterburners are there to increase the velocity of the gases but to utilize them optimally we need to slow down the gasses first. I imagine that tuning the diffusers must be quite a challenge. To have a design that results in the maximal net velocity gain.

[rjsjd]

I LEARN-ed a hell of of LOT so quick! Grrat speaker the way my mind thinks sometimes but my mouth cant keep up most times!

But this guy has an "AFTERBURNER" installed vocally!