Modeling and designing of well drilling system that accounts for vibrations

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9483586-B2
Application number	US-201313925466-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Jun 24, 2013
Priority date	Feb 2, 2007
Publication date	Nov 1, 2016
Grant date	Nov 1, 2016

Abstract

A method and apparatus associated with the production of hydrocarbons is disclosed. The method, which relates to modeling of drilling equipment, includes constructing one or more design configurations for at least a portion of a bottom hole assembly (BHA) and calculating results from each of the one or more design configurations. The calculated results of the modeling may include one or more performance indices that characterize the BHA vibration performance of the design configurations for operating parameters and boundary conditions that are substantially the same or may be different. These results are then simultaneously displayed for a user to facilitate design selection. The selected BHA design configuration may then be utilized in a well construction operation and thus associated with the production of hydrocarbons.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A method of modeling drilling equipment comprising:
constructing two or more design configurations, wherein each of the design configurations represents at least a portion of a bottom hole assembly (BHA);
identifying operating parameters for the two or more design configurations;
selecting lateral model mathematical boundary conditions for a lateral beam bending mathematical model that provide system excitation through a lateral mode, wherein the two or more design configurations are subjected to identical lateral system excitation;
calculating lateral beam bending results using the lateral beam bending mathematical model in a computer processor accessing non-transitory computer readable media, for each of the two or more design configurations using the identified operating parameters and the selected mathematical boundary conditions;
comparing the calculated results for the two or more design configurations;
displaying the calculated results of at least one of the two or more design configurations;
selecting operating parameters for at least a portion of a bottom hole assembly design configuration, based on the calculated results for the two or more design configurations, and selecting at least a portion of the bottom hole assembly design configuration, based on the selected operating parameters; and
drilling a well with drilling equipment based at least on the selected bottom hole assembly design configuration.

2. The method of claim 1 further comprising verifying the two or more design configurations by graphically displaying the two or more design configurations on the same display.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein constructing the two or more design configurations comprises:
constructing two or more design layouts;
associating the operating parameters and the lateral model mathematical boundary conditions with the two or more design layouts; and
associating equipment parameters with each of the two or more design layouts to create the two or more design configurations.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein calculating the results for two or more design configurations comprises:
generating a mathematical lateral beam bending model for each of the two or more design configurations;
calculating results of the mathematical lateral beam bending model for specified operating parameters and identical mathematical boundary conditions for each configuration;
identifying lateral beam bending outputs from the results of the mathematical lateral beam bending model for each configuration; and
determining state vectors and matrices from the identified outputs of the mathematical lateral beam bending model for each configuration.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein a two-dimensional or three-dimensional finite element model is used to calculate model results, from which state vectors and matrices may be identified.

6. The method of claim 4 wherein calculating the results of each of the two or more design configurations comprises:
generating a lumped parameter model of each of the two or more design configurations, wherein the lumped parameter model has a framework of state vector responses and matrix transfer functions;
determining a mass element transfer function and a beam element transfer function; and
determining identical mathematical boundary conditions and system excitation to generate the lateral beam bending model results.

7. The method of claim 4 further comprising determining one or more performance indices comprising a scalar quantity derived from the state vectors and matrices, so obtained for each set of mathematical boundary conditions and system excitation.

8. The method of claim 4 , wherein calculating the results for two or more design configurations further comprises:
identifying lateral beam bending outputs including displacement, tilt angle, bending moment, and beam shear force from the results of the mathematical lateral beam bending model for each configuration.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the operating parameters and the mathematical boundary conditions comprise a first modeling set of operating parameters and mathematical boundary conditions and a second modeling set of operating parameters and mathematical boundary conditions, both of the first set and second set of operating parameters and mathematical boundary conditions is used to model at least one of dynamic lateral bending and eccentric whirl.

10. The method of claim 1 further comprising selecting one of the two or more design configurations based on the calculated results.

11. The method of claim 1 wherein the calculated results comprise state variable values.

12. The method of claim 1 wherein the calculated results are displayed as three dimensional responses.

13. The method of claim 12 wherein the three dimensional responses are rotated based on movement of one or more virtual slider bars.

14. The method of claim 1 wherein the calculated results comprise one or more performance indices that characterize vibration performance of the two or more design configurations.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the one or more performance indices comprise one or more of an end-point curvature index, a BHA strain energy index, an average transmitted strain energy index, a transmitted strain energy index, a root-mean-square BHA sideforce index, a root-mean-square BHA torque index, a total BHA sideforce index, a total BHA torque index, and any mathematical combination thereof.

16. The method of claim 15 , wherein the end-point curvature index is defined by the equation:

PI
=

α
⁢

M
N

(
EI
)

N

wherein PI is the end-point curvature index, M N is the bending moment at the last element in each of the design configurations, (EI) N is the bending stiffness of each such element, and α is a constant.

17. The method of claim 15 , wherein the BHA strain energy index is defined by the equation:

PI
=

1
L

⁢

∑

i
=
1

L

⁢

M
i
2

2
⁢

(
EI
)

i

wherein PI is the BHA strain energy index, L is the last element index in a lower section of each of the design configurations, i is the element index in each of the design configurations, M i is the bending momen

Assignees

• Exxonmobil Upstream Res Co

Inventors

• Bailey Jeffrey R
• Biediger Erika A O
• Gupta Vishwas

Classifications

• G06F30/00

  Computer-aided design [CAD] · CPC title

• G06F30/23 Primary

  using finite element methods [FEM] or finite difference methods [FDM] · CPC title

• E21B41/00 Primary

  Equipment or details not covered by groups E21B15/00 - E21B40/00 · CPC title

• G06F17/50 Primary

  Physics · mapped topic