Air Independent Propulsion; Silent Submarines with Stirling Engines

Abstract

Air Independent propulsion deals with powering a submarine without access to atmosphere or air. As we know that every diesel engine needs access to an air supply to work. So, a submarine using diesel engine stores air in tanks to maneuver underwater. So, the submarine has to resurface after every fixed interval in order to refill the air(oxygen) supply. This makes it difficult to have long stealthy operations under water in a submarine. It is true that a nuclear submarine can stay underwater for months. But, a nuclear powered submarine needs constant pumping of cooling water inside out, causing a lot of pumps to run which in turn causes a lot of vibration. Also the installation of an entire nuclear reactor makes the whole submarine a significantly large in size. So, it cannot be used for silent and stealthy operations. The paper deals with the application of stirling engine, one of the important AIP system, in a submarine.