A Simple Hot-Water Drill for Penetrating Ice Shelves,

Abstract : A simple hot-water ice drill capable of making holes 20 cm in diameter through ice at least 50 meters thick was designed at DREP and tested on the Ellesmere Island ice shelves. The drill is built primarily with commercially-available equipment, the amount of in-house construction being kept to a minimum. Using readily available fuel, Arctic diesel or turbo fuel, a hole through the 50-metre-thick shelf was drilled at a rate of 11 m per hour. The paper discusses the drill construction and tests, and indicates a number of weak points in the design.