Systematic Investigation of Cuttings Transport Behavior in Horizontal Drilling Operation

Abstract

The aim of this study is the systematic investigation of cutting transport behaviour in horizontal drilling operation and the complete workflow of this study is comprised of four tasks: appropriate design of experiment (DOE), simulation set up, experimental validation and sensitive analysis. In the DOE, all parameters used in this study are grouped according to their respective categories, where their ranges are given. The simulation setup includes drawing the geometry, meshing, and running the simulation based on proper boundary conditions. In conclusion, the increase in the elemental size in a concentric annulus, a moderately eccentric annulus and a highly eccentric annulus decreases the cuttings pressure drop for fully concentric annulus, where (e) is 0, moderately eccentric annulus, where (e) is equal to 0.4 and highly eccentric annulus, where (e) is equal to 0.7. The increase in the fluid velocity increases the annular cuttings pressure drops for non-Newtonian fluid, with no solid and no drill pipe rotation, as well as non-Newtonian fluid, with a 4% solid and a 400RPM drilling pipe rotation. The increase in average fluid velocity increases the average cuttings velocity for horizontal annulus and the increase in annular fluid velocity increases the total pressure drops of cuttings.