Description
Chairs:
Dr. Keith Makinson and Dr. Nan Zang
Since the last update at the Seventh International Drilling Workshop on Ice Drilling Technology, in Madison, WI USA in September of 2013, the drilling group at the University of Copenhagen (UCPH) has been responsible for several shallow, intermediate, and deep drilling operations in both Greenland and Antarctica. The deep drilling program, EastGRIP, placed near the onset of the North East...
Since 1957-58 IGY only few penetrations through glacial ice-bedrock interface took place. Essential progress in ice drilling and new scientific goals stimulate development of drilling and sampling technique of rock-imbedded ice and sub-glacial bedrock. There are two objectives: 1) penetrate through natural obstacle and continue ice coring and 2) sampling of glacier-bedrock interface materials....
The brittle ice zone (BIZ) is a persistent challenge for deep and intermediate-depth polar ice core projects. Increasing ice overburden at depth pressurizes trapped air bubbles, resulting in fracture of ice cores as they are drilled brought to the surface. Only at depths/pressures where air bubbles fully transition to clathrates is this breakage relieved. Ice core fracturing has negative...
The Agile Sub-Ice Geological (ASIG) Drill was developed by U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP) for the U.S. National Science Foundation. The design of the system leverages existing exploration drill equipment to create a drill capable of recovering ice core at any targeted depth up to 700m and 10m of rock core beneath up to 700m of ice and firn. The system was developed and tested in 2015 and...
Ice freezing and thawing process beneath the Antarctic ice shelves is related to climate changing and studies of ice layers at the ice shelves bottom will facilitate further analysis of the interactions between the ice sheet and the ocean. Upwards thermal coring mechanism for using beneath ice shelves equipped with underwater automatically operated system is proposed. The formation mechanism...
The IDP Winkie Drill have deployed to two Antarctic field seasons. The first successful deployment was to the Ohio Range during the 2016-2017 field season where it recovered subglacial bedrock from five boreholes ranging in depth from 12.0 to 28.3 meters using the standard AW34 coring tools. Access boreholes were created with modified Kovacs 2-inch augers. The drill was deployed to the Ong...
The subglacial aquatic environment may provide unique information about microbial evolution and the Earthโs climate in the past. The prototype model of RECoverable Autonomous Sonde (RECAS-200) could penetrate through ice to the depth of 200 m by melting ice with thermal drill bit, then take water sample and detect the physical parameters (temperature, pressure, conductivity and pH) of...
HOTROD is a prototype melt-tip drill for rapid sampling of ice-sheet temperatures. The relatively low-cost melt-tip, which has thermistors embedded along its integrated tether cable, is intended for single-use deployment. This means the melt-tip is not recovered following insertion of the temperature sensors. The main shaft of HOTROD is 120 cm in length and 5 cm in diameter. Forward heating...
Snow temperature at 10 m depth in ice sheets and ice caps represents the local average annual temperature. Up to now, in Antarctica, a fair number of long-term observations of temperature and 10 m snow temperature have been made. However, only a handful of measurements have been taken at the eastern part of East Antarctica. In order to obtain the snow temperature data at Zhongshan Station โ...
The access to sub glacial regions gains interest in terrestrial and extraterrestrial research in the past years. In Antarctica lakes or other interesting sub glacial features have been accessed via mechanical (coring and non-coring), hot water or thermal drilling. Still the most of these areas are unexplored because of the lack of rapid access drills. The discovery of liquid water below the...
We present the main aspects of the design, development and application of the multifunctional borehole logger for geophysical monitoring (temperature, pressure, axis incline angle and radius of borehole cross sections) of ice boreholes. The logger was designed to use in the central region of the East Antarctica in the areas of Dome A at the Kunlun station (China) and Lake Vostok at the Vostok...
Most of density quantification methods require a sample, its preparation and few measurements. Procedures are laborious, slow and time consuming. Due to vertical and horizontal density variations a single vertical density profile has significant uncertainty. Multiple profiling allows increase precision of mass balance measurements. Field and laboratory measurements show that...
We present a field-portable ice core saw capable of both horizontal and vertical cuts, with adjustable feed rate, adjustable cutting height, fast retraction speed, and feed clutch. The design is a moving-saw design, and includes emergency stop and a remote control. Accessories such as ECM can be mounted on the saw. The design is currently being used at the National Centre for Antarctic & Ocean...
The U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP) has developed several hot water drills to support U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) funded research projects. Recent upgrades to the IDP Small Hot Water Drill leverage a design proven in the field for over two decades. The Sediment Laden Lake Ice Drill (SLLID) is designed to be portable over lake ice by just two people and capable of creating access...
The U.S. Ice Drilling Program (IDP) has the need to efficiently develop and operate drilling equipment. A prototype ice well has been created at the University of Wisconsin as a significant step in addressing this need. The well provides a column of ice approximately 15m deep and 25cm in diameter at temperatures as low as -20ยฐC. The well provides significant cost savings to the program by...
As one of the effective methods of rapid ice drill, thermal drilling is widely used to study ice sheets and glaciers. After drilling, the refreezing of the meltwater in the borehole is the key factor hindering down-the-hole observations. The temperature distribution in ice around thermally drilled borehole has a direct impact on the closure rate of the borehole. In order to determine the...
Replicate coring systems (RCS) provide a means for additional core samples with high scientific value to be collected from an existing borehole. Considerable conservation of resources can be realized by the implementation and deployment of core replicating technology which is integrated into an established drilling/coring system. A long range (>3km) core replicating system has been designed...
The stable isotope, aerosol, and atmospheric gas records in ice cores provide exceptional archives of past climate. Supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (Office of Polar Programs โ Antarctic Glaciology), a new 1,750-meter long ice core (~54,000 years in age) was recovered from South Pole, Antarctica, during the 2014-2015 (0 to 736 m) and 2015-2016 (736 to 1750 m) field seasons...
Efficient operation of drill equipment in the field can quickly be thwarted by bad weather. A structure to protect equipment and operators during poor weather conditions can significantly reduce the amount of down time during expeditions. However, structures are often a logistical burden and time consuming to erect. A lightweight tent, designed in collaboration with Fabricon, LLC, was...
The 4-Inch Drill, designed and built by the Polar Ice Coring Office (PICO), has long been the work horse of the U.S Ice Drilling Program (IDP) for ice core recovery to 300 meters. While the 4-Inch Drills are still in use, the systems are aging and in need of replacement. To address the continued demand for robust and lightweight shallow ice coring drills, IDP has developed the new Foro 400...
In order to obtain short additional core samples from intervals of specific interest (tephra layers, basal ice, shearing zones, etc.), the simple wireline side-wall thermal coring system is proposed. The corer includes driven unit, bendable core barrel, and thermal coring head. The side-wall coring system can be precisely positioned in the zone of interest. To this end, it can be equipped with...
Subglacial sediments are of great interest to the science community. They can contain physical, chemical and biological information that can reveal changes in ice sheet history and identify and characterise life in those environments. However, retrieving sediment cores from up to 1000โs of metres beneath the ice surface, through hot water drilled access holes, at remote field locations,...
Dielectric profiling (DEP) is a fast, non-destructive method to precisely scan the dielectric properties of an ice core in as high depth resolution as a few millimetres. Initially being proposed to acquire conductivity profiles, the method has been extended to also interpret relative permittivity and ultimately determine the firnโs density and its pure ice phaseโs conductivity by inversion of...
Hot water drilling technology is prominent in many kinds of polar investigations due to its environment-friendly medium and fast drilling speeds. However, its disadvantage is that it cannot directly obtain ice and bedrock cores. To sample cores from specific intervals, we propose to replace the bottom nozzle with PDM-motor + drill tools that can be directly driven through hot water flow to...
Understanding ice sheet dynamics is of high interest to predict the future ice sheet response in times of changing climate, and is also crucial to estimate borehole closure rate during accessing ice sheet especially by deep ice core drilling. Impurities in ice is one of the most influential factors on mechanical properties of ice and causes localized enhanced deformation. High concentrations...
