Uploaded March 2017 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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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
goo.gl/fCxCqs

→ Area-Mach Number Relation
goo.gl/yNuu2t

===== 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