Prediction of casing wear in extended-reach drilling

Intermediate casings in the build sections are subject to severe wear in extended-reach drilling. This paper presents a new method for predicting the depth of a wear groove on the intermediate casing. According to energy principle and dynamic accumulation of casing wear by tool joints, a model is established to calculate the wear area on the inner wall of the casing. The relationship functions between the wear groove depth and area are obtained based on the geometry relationship between the drillstring and the wear section and the assumption that the casing wear groove is crescent-shaped. The change of casing wear groove depth versus drilling footage under different-sized drillstrings is also discussed. A mechanical model is proposed for predicting casing wear location, which is based on the well trajectory and drillstring movement. The casing wear groove depth of a planned well is predicted with inversion of the casing wear factor from the drilled well and necessarily revised to improve the prediction accuracy for differences between the drilled well and the planned well. The method for predicting casing wear in extended-reach drilling is verified through actual case study. The effect of drillstring size on casing wear should be taken into account in casing wear prediction.

Experimental study ofcasing wear under impact-sliding conditions

Theoretical analysis and field monitoring show that lateral vibration has very important effect on casing wear in deep & ultra-deep well drilling. The wear mechanism of casing under impact-sliding work conditions has been investigated and many experiments have been completed with a newly developed full-scale casing wear test machine. Test results present that adhesion wear, contact fatigue, and grinding abrasion are the main wear mechanisms under impact-sliding test conditions. The friction coefficient and linear wear rate of the casing rise obviously with an increase in impact load. And the larger the impact load, the rougher the worn surface of the casing. The linear wear rate decreased slightly but the average friction coefficient increased slightly with an increase in impact frequency under an impact load of 2,500 N. Both the linear wear rate of the casing and the average friction coefficient increased substantially with an increase in impact frequency under an impact load of 4,000 N. Under lower impact load conditions, grinding abrasion and contact fatigue are the main mechanisms of casing wear; under higher impact load conditions, adhesion wear and contact fatigue are the main mechanisms of casing wear.

Analysis on Collapse Strength of Casing Wear

Carrying capacity of the casing will reduce after the casing is worn, which seriously affects the subsequent well drilling, well completion, oil extraction and well repair. A lot of researches on calculation of casing wear collapse strength have been done, but few of them focus on collapsing failure mechanism, and influencing factors and law of collapse strength. So, significant difference between estimated value and actual value of collapse strength comes into being. By theoretical analysis, numerical simulation and actual test, the collapsing failure mechanism of casing wear as well as the influencing factors and laws of collapse strength are investigated, and the investigation results show that collapse of crescent casing wear belongs to 'three hinged' instability. The severely-worn position on the casing is yielded into the plastic zone first then deformed greatly, which causes the plastic instability of the whole structure. The casing wear collapse strength presents changes of exponent, power function and linear trend with the residual casing wall thickness, wear radius and axial load, respectively. When the flexibility is less than 10°/30 m, the borehole bending has less impact on casing collapse strength. Thus, the computation model for the casing wear collapsing strength is established by introducing wear radius coefficient and casing equivalent yield strength, at the same time, the model is tested. The test results show that the relative error for the computation model is less than 5%. The research results provide a basis for design of the casing string strength and evaluation of down-hole safety.

Prediction models of burst strength degradation for casing with considerations of both wear and corrosion

Casing wear and casing corrosion are serious problems affecting casing integrity failure in deep and ultra-deep wells.This paper aims to predict the casing burst strength with considerations of both wear and corrosion.Firstly,the crescent wear shape is simplified into three categories according to common mathematical models.Then,based on the mechano-electrochemical(M-E)interaction,the prediction model of corrosion depth is built with worn depth as the initial condition,and the prediction models of burst strength of the worn casing and corroded casing are obtained.Secondly,the accuracy of different prediction models is validated by numerical simulation,and the main influence factors on casing strength are obtained.At last,the theoretical models are applied to an ultra-deep well in Northwest China,and the dangerous well sections caused by wear and corrosion are predicted,and the corrosion rate threshold to ensure the safety of casing is obtained.The results show that the existence of wear defects results in a stress concentration and enhanced M-E interaction on corrosion depth growth.The accuracy of different mathematical models is different:the slot ring model is most accurate for predicting corrosion depth,and the eccentric model is most accurate for predicting the burst strength of corroded casing.The burst strength of the casing will be overestimated by more than one-third if the M-E interaction is neglected,so the coupling effect of wear and corrosion should be sufficiently considered in casing integrity evaluation.

Uncertainty Analysis of the Residual Strength of Non-Uniformly Loaded Casingsin Deep Wells

An uncertainty analysis method is proposed for the assessment of the residual strength of a casing subjected to wear and non-uniform load in a deep well.The influence of casing residual stress,out-of-roundness and non-uniform load is considered.The distribution of multi-source parameters related to the residual anti extrusion strength and residual anti internal pressure strength of the casing after wear are determined using the probability theory.Considering the technical casing of X101 well in Xinjiang Oilfield as an example,it is shown that the randomness of casing wear depth,formation elastic modulus and formation Poisson’s ratio are the main factors that affect the uncertainty of residual strength.The wider the confidence interval is,the greater the uncertainty range is.Compared with the calculations resulting from the proposed uncertainty analysis method,the residual strength obtained by means of traditional single value calculation method is either larger or smaller,which leads to the conclusion that the residual strength should be considered in terms of a range of probabilities rather than a single value.

Combining Diagnosis of the Casing and Tooljoint Wear in Mud Fluid While Drilling

A ground monitoring system was developed to diagnose casing and tooljoint wear in a well dur-ing drilling by combining the analysis of wear debris with detection of the tooljoints. The result shows that the wear debris concentration in the circulating drilling mud in a well reflects the total wear rate of the tribo-elements in the well, while the wear detection of a tooljoint can indicate its wear loss between two contigu-ous times of drill-pipe lifting. A diagnosis method that integrates the two types of information was developed to identify severe wear regions in well casing. Theoretical analyses and field test show that the severe cas-ing wear region can be located relatively accurately by the integrated method. This method presents a new ground casing wear diagnosis approach with good real-time results.