Use of CFD Application in Down Hole Well Completion Works

Introduction

When finishing a downhole well, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study is utilized to examine how gas and oil behave inside the deep land surface. Do simulations for fluid flow analysis, heat transfer, sand control and erosion prediction, hydraulic fracturing, multiphase flow, wellbore stability, and flow control device optimization in order to finish the CFD application in Down Hole Well completion project.

Down Hole Well

On land that contains oil and gas, two natural resources with a variety of uses, it is a method for controlling erosion. Analyze the area of potential natural resources beneath the surface of the land first. Various types of machinery or mechanisms are employed in the erosion process, and in order to effectively extract oil and gas from the deep ground, the design of these mechanical components necessitates analysis in order to forecast how the gas and oil will behave inside the land and optimization of various bore well parameters.

Type of Analysis for Down Hole Well Completion Works

Fluid flow analysis

Various types of machinery and equipment are employed in downhole well completion operations to ensure that the mechanism is resilient to operating circumstances and environmental factors. Many boundary conditions were implemented based on the physical state of each and every instrument in fluid flow analysis, which simulates the behaviour of both gas and oil according to the geometry of materials and equipment. Verify many metrics during the analysis, such as the fluid and gas’s temperature, velocity, and pressure. Plotting several graphs in relation to the time domain will also help you assess how well chemicals work. Significant variations in fluid types, including multi-phase, steady state, and transient state.

Heat-transfer analysis

Two challenges arise when operating a downhole well for drilling: assessing the necessary cooling methods and controlling the subsurface drilling fluid temperature in real-time using the available technology. Both are coupled downhole heat transfer models that work with both oil- and water-based drilling fluids to manage pressure and temperature. Analysis can also be done on additional variables, such as wellbore temperature. The standard deviation of the downhole temperature corresponding to the factor can be found using CFD. Drill string rotation speed, pump rate, viscosity, rate of pressure, injection temperature, and drilling fluid thermal conductivity are the influencing parameters that can be employed to direct the cooling technology of the drilling fluid. A CFD study can be used to regulate the heat effect and justify the position of every equipment in real time.

Sand control and erosion prediction

The oil and gas sector has found that modeling multiphase flows with sand management and erosion prediction in mind has grown into a potent engineering tool in the last year. During the project design phase, it can be used to conduct virtual experiments to aid in the design of the oil and gas plant system. The modeling approaches have seen numerous noteworthy advancements, such as the incorporation of flow physics details, the swift advancement of computational resources, and the adoption of modeling methodology from other industries like automotive and aviation. But before they can be applied to the design, development, or monitoring systems of applications unique to oil and gas, the generic simulation models and tools need to be verified and evaluated. Furthermore, high-fidelity flow and erosion simulations, if they present an industrial application in terms of short simulation runtime and low resource effort, can minimize the cost of production system design and operation optimization; they enable sensitivity studies for a large number of design variations and production condition sets.

Hydraulic fracturing

In order to solve the issues of unequal proppant placement in fractures and low propping efficiency, hydraulic fracturing using variable fluid viscosity and proppant density is crucial for the development of tight oil reservoirs. It is yet unknown, nevertheless, how proppant density and fracturing fluid viscosity affect proppant transit in fractures. For this type of problem, a proppant transport model with fluid-particle two-phase interaction is constructed, based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the discrete element method (DEM). Furthermore, a proppant transport experiment was carried out with varying viscosity fracturing fluid and proppant density. A novel large-scale visual fracture simulation apparatus was created to enable the online visual monitoring of proppant travel.

Wellbore stability

Estimating the mechanical characteristics of the formation and the level of in situ stresses are two aspects of the analysis of wellbore instability. The bottom-hole pressure is the only variable in this analysis that may be changed while the production is running. If the bottom hole pressure is higher than expected, the wellbore is stable, the matrix formation fails due to a decrease in reservoir pressure, and the current stresses are increased in order to stop the formation of sand. Conversely, decreased pressure can cause matrix formation breakouts, which can lead to the generation of sand, and rock shear failures, which are known as boreholes. Using a failure criterion to assess the rock strength against induced tangential stresses around the wellbore at a certain pressure to the boundary hole can help estimate the likelihood of failures surrounding the wellbore during production. Two of the analytical techniques are modeling and simulation.

Optimization of flow control devices

The design of flow control devices has been influenced by the widespread application of computational fluid dynamics for fluid flow simulation. The cyclic computer-aided design/computational fluid dynamics integrated design process is hampered by the need for detailed geometry input and complex solver setup that computational fluid dynamics simulation demands. To close the gap, laborious human interventions are unavoidable. This paper addresses this problem by proposing a theoretical framework in which the simulation intent capture can intelligently support the computational fluid dynamics solver configuration. To assist the simulation intent capture, two feature concepts—the dynamic physics feature and the fluid physics feature—have been defined. A prototype that seamlessly links the design intent and computational fluid dynamics simulation intent has been developed for the execution of computer-aided design/computational fluid dynamics integrated design without the requirement for human interaction. This prototype is utilized to study an outflow control device used in the steam-assisted gravity drainage process, and it successfully optimizes the device’s target performance.

Conclusion

It was immediately determined that various types of CFD analysis were needed for detailed downhole well completion works in order to control various fluid parameters. These analyses also justified various physical issues in the areas of fluid flow analysis, heat transfer, sand control and erosion prediction, hydraulic fracturing, multiphase flow, wellbore stability, and flow control device optimization.

Reference:

  1. ANSYS user guideline.

Share this article