we all know the fact but why are they that inefficient if they just burn some more fuel? today i just realised how to fix this in real life, let me explain. when an afterburner is on, it burns fuel in order to heat air and force his exit through the nozzle as heat expands it, we can see this just by looking at the exhaust plume. and here is the problem, if we are able to see the plume from the side of the engine, that means fuel is still being burned when it exits the engine, nd so it is heating air that is not forced to push the aircraft, decreasing fuel efficiency, if we could install a sufficiently long nozzle that the complete plume was hidden, air would be expanded even further and will generate more thrust, if we just lower the fuel amount used we could achieve better afterburner efficiency at the cost of a longer nozzle capable of resisting overexpansion of the hot ait and the subsequent exhaust heat
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4,586 Livingg017one month ago
@Ontos21 i think the problem could actually be the size and the coat of the materials, maybe overpressure could damage the main engine, however if we take a look to MiG-25's and Tu-22M, which are planes with the engines extremely forward and with the nozzle very long past the afterburning stage, we can see that both planes offer ridiculously high amounts of thrust compared to their counterparts with short nozzles such as the f111 but without drinking that much fuel. the tu22 has enormously high heat efficiency thanks to special fuel that burns faster and so the plume does not go a lot further than the burners, this gives him its peculiar blue afterburners, which are not present on the mig-25 because of the fuel
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295 Ontos21one month ago
I’m kinda new to engine design, but I think the reason might be that the extra long nozzle would add a significant amount of weight, and it would only marginally improve thrust because the air in an afterburner plume is already at extremely high speeds; focusing that would make little difference. So it would give you slightly more thrust, yes, but also much more weight. At least I think.
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if anyone that reads this for any reason owns a jet engine of any kind could you please try if this would work? we could get the collier trophy for this discovery if it proves tue