Evaluation of the cement bond quality through filtering the reflected ultrasonic waves

High cement bond quality is required to keep an oil well from hydraulic commu- nication between zones. In the cement bond evaluation, the ultrasonic echo method is widely used for its capability of channeling azimuth detection. Full waveforms reflected from the cased hole are simulated for different bonding conditions by the generalized transfer matrix method. Because of the high acoustic impedance of casing, the amplitudes of the reflected waves from the cement and the formation are small and cannot easily be used to evaluate the cementing condition. The wave that can propagate into the cement and the formation through the casing concentrates closely on the casing resonant frequency. To reduce the amplitude of the reflected wave from the casing inner surface and highlight the part of the reflected wave which carries the cementing quality information, the reflected full wave is filtered according to the casing resonant frequency. There are several wave packets in the filtered waveform. When the amplitude of the second wave packet is low, the cement bonds well with the casing, otherwise poorly. A low amplitude third wave packet is an indication of a good bond of the cement with the formation, otherwise poor. To reveal the sensitivity of the reflection wave amplitudes to the incident angle, reflected full waveform is modeled when an acoustic beam with finite width is incident on the casing. It is shown that the bond evaluation method based on filtered wave packets is valid for incident angle less than 5 degrees.

Experimental Investigation of Second Interface Cement Bond Evaluation

Cement bond model wells （1：10 scaled-down） were made with a gradually degrading cement annulus for cement bond evaluation of the first interface （between the casing and the cement annulus） and the second interface （between the cement annulus and the formation）. Experimental simulation on cement bond logging was carried out with these model wells. The correlation of acoustic waveforms, casing wave energy and flee casing area before and after cement bonding of the second interface was established. The experimental results showed that the arrival of the casing waves had no relationship with the cement bonding of the second interface, but the amplitude of the casing head wave decreased obviously after the second interface was bonded. So, cement bonding of the second interface had little effect on the evaluation of the cement bond quality of the first interface by using casing head wave arrivals. Strong cement annulus waves with early arrivals were observed before the second interface was bonded, while obvious ＂formation waves＂ instead of cement annulus waves were observed after the second interface was bonded.