A new percussion hammer mechanism for a borehole deployable subglacial sediment corer

Subglacial sediments have the potential to reveal information about the controls on glacier flow, changes in ice-sheet history and characterise life in those environments. Retrieving sediments from beneath the ice, through hot water drilled access holes at remote field locations, present many challe...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of glaciology 2021-09, Vol.62 (85-86), p.385-389
Main Authors: Makinson, Keith, Ashurst, Daniel, Anker, Paul G. D., Smith, James A., Hodgson, Dominic A., Davis, Peter E. D., Smith, Andrew M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Boreholes
Core sampling
Corers
Coring
Depth
Design
glacial sedimentology
Glacier flow
Glaciers
Hammers
Ice engineering
Ice sheets
Ice shelves
Percussion
Sediment
Sediments
subglacial sediments
Surveying
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Subglacial sediments have the potential to reveal information about the controls on glacier flow, changes in ice-sheet history and characterise life in those environments. Retrieving sediments from beneath the ice, through hot water drilled access holes at remote field locations, present many challenges. Motivated by the need to minimise weight, corer diameter and simplify assembly and operation, British Antarctic Survey, in collaboration with UWITEC, developed a simple mechanical percussion corer. At depths over 1000 m however, manual operation of the percussion hammer is compromised by the lack of clear operator feedback at the surface. To address this, we present a new auto-release-recovery percussion hammer mechanism that makes coring operations depth independent and improves hammer efficiency. Using a single rope tether for both the corer and hammer operation, this modified percussion corer is relatively simple to operate, easy to maintain, and has successfully operated at a depth of >2130 m.
ISSN:0260-3055
1727-5644
DOI:10.1017/aog.2020.83