Afterburner

An afterburner (or a reheat) is an additional component present on some jet engines, mostly military supersonic aircraft. Its purpose is to provide an increase in thrust, usually for supersonic flight, takeoff and for combat situations. Afterburning is achieved by injecting additional fuel into the jet pipe downstream of (i.e. after) the turbine. The advantage of afterburning is significantly increased thrust; the disadvantage is its very high fuel consumption and inefficiency, though this is often regarded as acceptable for the short periods during which it is usually used.

Pilots can activate and deactivate afterburners in-flight, and jet engines are referred to as operating wet when afterburning is being used and dry when not. An engine producing maximum thrust wet is at maximum power, while an engine producing maximum thrust dry is at military power.

Principle

Jet-engine thrust is governed by the general principle of mass flow rate. Thrust depends on two things: the velocity of the exhaust gas and the mass of that gas. A jet engine can produce more thrust by either accelerating the gas to a higher velocity or by having a greater mass of gas exit the engine. Designing a basic turbojet engine around the second principle produces the turbofan engine, which creates slower gas but more of it. Turbofans are highly fuel efficient and can deliver high thrust for long periods, but the design trade-off is a large size relative to the power output. To generate increased power with a more compact engine for short periods, an engine requires an afterburner. The afterburner increases thrust primarily by accelerating the exhaust gas to a higher velocity. While the mass of the fuel added to the exhaust does contribute to an increase in exhaust mass, this effect is small compared to the increase in exhaust velocity.

Afterburner (disambiguation)

An afterburner is an addition to a jet engine to increase thrust.

Afterburner may also refer to:

Media and entertainment

Other uses

After Burner

After Burner (アフターバーナー, Afutā Bānā) is a 1987 combat flight simulator arcade game by Sega AM2. It is one of the first games designed by Yu Suzuki. The player flew an F-14 using a specialized joystick (with moving seat, in some installations), and the game spawned several sequels.

Gameplay

The game allows the player to control a F-14 Tomcat jet, which must destroy a series of enemy jets throughout 18 stages. At the start of the game, the player takes off from an aircraft carrier called the SEGA Enterprise, which shares a similar name to the one used in the 1986 film Top Gun.

In the arcade version, the jet itself employs a machine gun and a limited set of heat-seeking missiles, in the Mastersystem version there is an unlimted amount of missiles. These weapons are replenished by another aircraft after beating a few stages. The aircraft, cannon and missile buttons are all controlled from an integrated flight stick.

The game itself was released in two variations: a standard upright cabinet and a rotating cockpit version. In the cockpit version, the seat rotated horizontally, and the cockpit rotated vertically. The rotating cockpit version also featured two speakers inside the cockpit at head-level, which produced excellent stereo sound that significantly added to the gameplay experience. Both cabinets contained a grey monitor frame with flashing lights at the top that indicated an enemy's "lock" on your craft.