Polar ��esearch Center��Jilin University��Changchun 130026��China

Ice cores contain an abundance of information about the Earth's climate in the past��and recovered from shallow drilling down to 300--350 m give sufficient information for reconstructing of the last climatic chan- ges and for monitoring of pollution from human being�� Cable-suspended core auger drills use an armored cable with a winch to provide power to the down-hole motor system and to retrieve the down-hole unit�� Because of their lightweight��convenient transportation and installation��high penetration rates and low power consumption�� core auger drills are widely used for shallow drilling in ice�� Nowadays at least 14 types of auger electromechani- cal drills were designed and tested in different foreign and national glaciological laboratories�� However��auger options were usually determined by experience��and the main parameters (helix angle of the fights and rotational speed) are varied in a wide range from drill to drill�� If parameters of auger are not chosen properly��poorly en- gineered drills had troubles with low efficiency of cuttings transportation��jam of ice cuttings��repeated fragmen- tation��cutters icing and stop penetration��abnormal power consumption��high rotation torques��and so on�� Thus��this paper presents the method of optimization of ice cuttings transportation of cable-suspended core auger drill on the base of the theory of rotary auger�� As the result��the optimal helix angle was determined correspond- ing to the rotational speed from the transportation efficiency point of view��