Deep sea hammer corer

The objective of this multi-national project is to develop a novel deep sea coring system capable of acquiring long, undisturbed sediment cores, from seabed formations which cannot be satisfactorily cored by present methods. To enable this system to function, the development mounts hydraulic, electronic control and data monitoring systems on the corer. The corer is controlled indirectly from a surface computer, with power and communications being transmitted through a combined power and lift umbilical. Real time geotechnical information from a bore hole can be obtained by replacing the core barrel with a cone penetrometer and fluid sampler. The system is designed to operate from oceanographic research vessels, but may be transferred to any suitably equipped survey vessel. The development builds upon technology developed by the individual partners in the project