A tripod piston corer for taking a meter-long sediment core with an undisturbed sediment–water interface

Abstract

We present a design for a piston corer that can take a sediment core up to 1 m long, with an undisturbed sediment–water interface. The coring device possesses a tripod unit and a core-tube unit, the latter comprised of a core tube, a piston with a wire, a drive weight in which the core tube is mounted and a steel rod. The tripod stands on the sediment surface during coring, stabilizing the system and serving as an anchor point for the piston wire. A ball clamp, the critical component of the design, is mounted on top of the tripod. The steel rod runs through the ball clamp and at its lower end, holds the drive weight and the core tube. The ball clamp allows the core tube to slide downward, while the piston is held in a fixed vertical position by the wire connected to the tripod. When the corer is lifted, however, the ball clamp locks. This makes it possible to operate the corer with a single cable, because the piston is not subject to any lifting force when the corer is retrieved. The piston remains in position in the core tube even if the collected sediment core is very short. The piston corer can be deployed from a raft or a boat.