Development of a portable percussion piston corer

Abstract

We developed a new portable percussion piston corer for coring lacustrine and shallow-marine sediments from a frozen ice surface. The weight of the corer is less than 100 kg, and it can be separated into individual components. Therefore, the corer can be carried to remote sites using pack frames and allows coring to be undertaken in areas that cannot be reached with mechanical drilling equipment. The engine-driven percussion coring can obtain relatively coarse and hard sediments. The main body of the corer is composed of a transparent polycarbonate pipe with an external diameter of 76 mm, which allows us to check length and facies of the cored sediments immediately after coring. The polycarbonate pipe is suitable for preserving sediments and can be easily replaced in subsequent coring. The new corer is advantageous for lacustrine- and marine-sediment coring in extreme (cold) environments, such as Antarctica and high mountains, and may also be applied to a wide range of geoscientific fields.