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Application of an enhanced discrete element method to oil and gas drilling processes

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Abstract

The authors present results on the use of the discrete element method (DEM) for the simulation of drilling processes typical in the oil and gas exploration industry. The numerical method uses advanced DEM techniques using a local definition of the DEM parameters and combined FEM-DEM procedures. This paper presents a step-by-step procedure to build a DEM model for analysis of the soil region coupled to a FEM model for discretizing the drilling tool that reproduces the drilling mechanics of a particular drill bit. A parametric study has been performed to determine the model parameters in order to maintain accurate solutions with reduced computational cost.

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Acknowledgments

Financial support for this work was provided by Weatherford. The authors thank Dr. C. Labra for many useful discussions. The numerical results presented in this work have been obtained with the code DEMPACK developed at CIMNE (www.cimne.com/dempack).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. CIMNE - Centre Internacional de Metodes Numerics en Enginyeria, Campus Norte UPC, 08034, Barcelona, Spain

    Pere Andreu Ubach, Ferran Arrufat, Francisco Zárate & Eugenio Oñate

  2. Weatherford International, Houston, USA

    Lev Ring

  3. MindMesh Inc, Houston, USA

    Raju Gandikota

Authors
  1. Pere Andreu Ubach
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  2. Ferran Arrufat
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  3. Lev Ring
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  4. Raju Gandikota
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  5. Francisco Zárate
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  6. Eugenio Oñate
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eugenio Oñate.

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Ubach, P.A., Arrufat, F., Ring, L. et al. Application of an enhanced discrete element method to oil and gas drilling processes. Comp. Part. Mech. 3, 29–41 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-015-0080-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40571-015-0080-5

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