How Does an Afterburner Work?

How does an Afterburner Work?

 A jet engine, like many other engines is a reaction engine. It works by absorbing air, compressing the air in a combustion chamber where the air expands greatly and then it is shot back out at the back of the engine as air and exaust at about Mach 2 or about 1500 miles/hour. This is known as thrust. An engine absorbs air and shoots it out as a hot gas.

Animation of a 2-spool, high-bypass turbofan.
A. Low pressure spool
B. High pressure spool
C. Stationary components
1. Nacelle
2. Fan
3. Low pressure compressor
4. High pressure compressor
5. Combustion chamber
6. High pressure turbine
7. Low pressure turbine
8. Core nozzle
9. Fan nozzle

Modern jet engines use a turbine to improve the fuel effiency of a jet engine. This allows the jet engine to work at lower speeds and therefore lower temperatures. The turbine compresses the air before fuel is injected in the combustion chamber. This modern engine is extremely efficent. For example, on a Boeing 747-400, the aircraft can earn up to 19 miles per passenger gallon.

An afterburner is a part of an engine that acts like a booster. The afterburner is another stage fitted on only a certain amount of their engines like that of a Rolls Royce/SNECMA Olympus 593 fitted on the Supersonic Concorde. The afterburner injects fuel directly into the exaust stream expanding the air even more and creating nearly 50% more thrust to the engines' thrust.


The advantage of an afterburner is it can significantly add more thrust without adding weight, complexity and higher speeds and temperature to the engine. An afterburner is basically just a number of fuel injectors to compress the air further and increase the thrust of an engine.

The disadvantage of the afterburner is that it uses a lot of fuel to generate its power.

The afterburner was an amazing design for the 1970s to 1990s but now has come out of commercial service due to the retirement of the Concorde. Military aircraft like the F-18 and the SR-71 still has afterburner to aid with special missions or to take-off from a short airstrip.

To learn more about the afterburner, click here - very interesting

Summary:
This article is about an afterburner which is a stage in certain jet engines that compresses the air to create more thrust. The afterburner does have to burn more fuel to perform this. Military aircraft still use afterburners to help aid the performance of the aircraft and this is very important.

Reflection:
This article is very important to me because it was essential to the developpement of many military aircraft and the supersonic Concorde. To develop new technologies, it is important to look to the past to build the future. With advancing technology, we don't know if previous technology is best for us. The afterburner, in my opinion, is an aviation and aeronautical symbol. The afterburner is a great design giving its excellent performance. What is good about the article is the way the afterburner works. Very cool and interesting.