Thermal Drilling of the Glacier (Termicheskoe Urenie Lednikovikh Pokrovov)

Thermal drilling is one technique for drilling the ice in the Antarctic. The idea of obtaining boreholes in the layer of glaciers by thermal drilling has attracted the attention of researchers for a long time because of the tendancy to use the low melting temperature of ice as a rock, forming the glaciers. The report attempts to classify the basic methods involved in thermal drilling of glaciers in the Antarctic, to present certain findings in the operations on the thermal drilling, and also to analyze theoretically the basic processes governing the thermal drilling conditions during passage through ice and typifying the conditions in the ice layer both ahead of the moving thermal drill as well as along the side walls of the borehole. Simple analytical equations and graphs for computing the basic parameters determining thermal drilling are presented. Draft trans. from Antarktika. Doklady Komissii (USSR) p141-156 1972.