TY - GEN
T1 - Smart lost circulation materials for wellbore strengthening
AU - Mansour, Ahmed Khaled
AU - Taleghani, Arash Dahi
AU - Li, Guoqiang
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 ARMA, American Rock Mechanics Association.
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Lost circulation can be a very serious problem while drilling especially in naturally fractured formations. Lost circulation may have serious safety consequences and heavy financial costs in the form of losing mud fluid to the fractures, wellbore stability issues and losing rig time while dealing with the problem. Despite recent advances, lost circulation materials used in the field still have disadvantages such as plugging tools due to the large size of the particles, damaging production zones and failure to minimize lost circulation when heavy mud columns exists in the annulus. In this work, we introduce a new class of “Smart Lost Circulation Materials” to effectively seal the fractures and minimize lost circulation by increasing hoop stress. Our smart LCMs are made out of thermoset shape memory polymers which are activated upon exposure to the formation's in situ temperature that causes expansion and acts as an effective seal for the fractures. The physical properties of our smart lost circulation materials prevent damage to production zones and tool plugging. In addition, the expansive property of the smart LCM provides compressional forces that strengthen the wellbore by artificially reducing the fracture gradient. We conducted a series of experiments using a HPHT particle-plugging apparatus (PPA) to measure the sealing efficiency of the smart LCMs. In addition, a fully coupled CFD-DEM model is developed to further study the effectiveness of various particle size distributions and the corresponding stress release to improve the design of this product.
AB - Lost circulation can be a very serious problem while drilling especially in naturally fractured formations. Lost circulation may have serious safety consequences and heavy financial costs in the form of losing mud fluid to the fractures, wellbore stability issues and losing rig time while dealing with the problem. Despite recent advances, lost circulation materials used in the field still have disadvantages such as plugging tools due to the large size of the particles, damaging production zones and failure to minimize lost circulation when heavy mud columns exists in the annulus. In this work, we introduce a new class of “Smart Lost Circulation Materials” to effectively seal the fractures and minimize lost circulation by increasing hoop stress. Our smart LCMs are made out of thermoset shape memory polymers which are activated upon exposure to the formation's in situ temperature that causes expansion and acts as an effective seal for the fractures. The physical properties of our smart lost circulation materials prevent damage to production zones and tool plugging. In addition, the expansive property of the smart LCM provides compressional forces that strengthen the wellbore by artificially reducing the fracture gradient. We conducted a series of experiments using a HPHT particle-plugging apparatus (PPA) to measure the sealing efficiency of the smart LCMs. In addition, a fully coupled CFD-DEM model is developed to further study the effectiveness of various particle size distributions and the corresponding stress release to improve the design of this product.
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M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85040458891
T3 - 51st US Rock Mechanics / Geomechanics Symposium 2017
SP - 1825
EP - 1832
BT - 51st US Rock Mechanics / Geomechanics Symposium 2017
PB - American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA)
T2 - 51st US Rock Mechanics / Geomechanics Symposium 2017
Y2 - 25 June 2017 through 28 June 2017
ER -