Polar Ｒesearch 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．