Across many fields of science and engineering computers now play a significant role in scientific discovery through both large scale simulation and real time data acquisition. As these scientific simulations increasingly require new levels of complexity and fidelity, and leveraging increasing computational capabilities, scientists are migrating their applications back and forth from workstations to supercomputers, high performance clusters, and new distributed grids of computers. For applications which depend on live real world data, the migration to varied and distributed resources provides additional challenges.Drilling Dynamic Dysfunction, or inefficient motion phenomenon in drillstrings is a complicated, expensive and time consuming challenge for drillers seeking energy resources in the earth. A sensor enabled physical analog model for the drillstring system will help drillers and scientists acquire new information about motion phenomenon such as stick slip and whirl, and be a knowledge transfer tool for demonstration, because unlike actual drillstrings deep in the earth the model can be seen, touched, and felt right in front of ones eyes. Sensor enabled, computationally aided decision making is critical to mitigating drilling dynamic dysfunction, improve the economic cases for discovering and developing energy sources. The Cactus Code drilling dynamics toolkit provides research and production applications for grid computing enabled scientific processes tailored to the challenges of drilling geothermal, oil or gas wells. The tool kit seeks to provide robust modular tools for scientists and engineers to build real-time drilling applications utilizing state of the art sensor platforms in a grid computing paradigm.The grid computing simulation code modules, data relay component examples, and sensor platform modules have been previously reported on.[1] This poster shows the development of a grid enabled physical experiment, with a focus on real-time sensor, reporting, and computation integration. For our application, we will use the Cactus Code (www.cactuscode.org) open-source high performance scientific computing framework as the simulation framework, LabVIEW (www.ni.com/LabVIEW) as the data acquisition software, and including the Nintendo Wii Remote as a sensor node.The creation of a physical analog model of the drilling assembly is a research component of a petroleum engineering dissertation focusing on drillstring dynamics and vibration. The goal was to create a new analog model to the complex behavior of the drilling bottom hole assembly system. The opportunity to develop this analog model with real time sensor grid computation also facilitated accelerated development and experimentation.The authors' contributions to this effort include developing the original Cactus Drilling toolkit application. New work leveraging community momentum in the area of wireless sensor connectivity to the sensor platform was necessary for the experimental models connectivity to the relay. The system of the physical analog model ...
Across many fields of science and engineering computers now play a significant role in scientific discovery through both large scale simulation and real time data acquisition. As these scientific simulations increasingly require new levels of complexity and fidelity, and leveraging increasing computational capabilities, scientists are migrating their applications back and forth from workstations to supercomputers, high performance clusters, and new distributed grids of computers. For applications which depend on live real world data, the migration to varied and distributed resources provides additional challenges. This migration involves reassigning and testing individual sensor communications and data path integrity for the application before the application is ready for a real time operating environment. This paper presents one general approach for communicating live real world data to simulations deployed on high-end computational resources. The architecture and design are presented for generic applications, before focusing on a particular scenario for drilling dynamics optimizations. In this scenario, simulations of drilling behavior depend on real time data from on-site (remote) sensors. Sensor data is streamed through to a simulation framework. The framework (available on a desktop computer or a supercomputer) displays relevant information, starts simulations with real time inputs then presents results and recommendations. For our application, we will use the Cactus Code (https://www.cactuscode.org) open-source high performance scientific computing framework as the simulation framework, and LabVIEW (https://www.ni.com/LabVIEW) as the data acquisition software. The advances in architecture portability allowed by the framework are summarized, and experiences of system uses are presented. Discussion will include opportunities found and learnings from using this platform in various environments highlighting drilling optimization. Introduction Simulation Framework The Cactus Code is a framework for high performance scientific computing designed for scientists and engineers. In most cases, high performance scientific computing makes use of supercomputers, which consist of a large number of processors working in tandem (parallel processing) to solve a particular problem. In an effort to reduce the development time involved in parallel programming, researchers have created frameworks to develop scientific computing code that is portable, scalable, efficient and most importantly re-usable. Writing code for such machines has its unique challenges: portability, scalability, efficiency (for computation, communication and input/output) and flexibility. The framework allows scientists and engineers to write modules (in different programming languages if desired) and use them in conjunction with other modules written by other researchers to solve computational problems. The framework provides tools ranging from basic computational building blocks to complete toolkits that can be used to solve numerical relativity problems or computational fluid dynamics problems. Tools developed in the Cactus Code framework run on a wide range of hardware ranging from desktop PC's, large supercomputers, to 'grid' computers. In an effort to expand the available toolset available in the framework, work has begun on the following energy industry tools: a seismic inversion tool, a reservoir simulator and drilling models. The framework and its toolkits are free and publicly available for download from the Cactus Code website.
Many developments in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico target reservoirs are below salt sections. As well plans increasingly call for drilling through long salt sections; a common strategy in the Gulf of Mexico is to drill while simultaneously opening the hole with an under-reaming tool. This configuration presents unique dynamic behaviors to the drilling system. Understanding the drilling system is important in order to reduce vibrations and to meet desired run lengths. In the Gulf of Mexico dynamics have limited the effectiveness and life of hole opening tools. Therefore, the identification of drillstring dynamic behavior is critical to efficiently executing well plans that call for under-reaming while drilling. To study the vibration phenomenon unique to under-reaming while drilling bottomhole assembly dynamics through salt sections the operator employed a unique distributed downhole measurement system which included vibration sensors. The goals of this study were to evaluate the accountability of the real-time MWD and surface data, to illuminate complex dynamics and provide further stimulus for the development and adoption of real-time strategies. The distributed measurement system generated insights in all three areas. This paper presents examples of specific dynamic behaviors from several deepwater Gulf of Mexico wells, focusing on the drilling phenomenon occurring in salt. Key observations about the development of vibrations while opening the reamer, drilling, drilling transitions and back reaming are given. Attenuation of vibration to the surface is demonstrated. Predrill modeling of bottomhole assemblies was also cross-validated. The impact of cutting structure effectiveness and bottomhole assembly "neutral point management" is also highlighted with examples. Introduction Deepwater Gulf of Mexico wells often require drilling through the salt canopy. (see Figure 1.) In some plays, subsalt targets equate to the majority of the well being placed in salt. Similarly subsalt targets mean the wells may be very deep and therefore benefit from a large hole size to provide adequate clearances for deepening casing strings. Maintaining hole verticality is also important to limit casing wear due to hang down weight effects. Casing running in salt presents the added challenge of salt creep, often requiring oversized hole. (Zhang et al. 2008) A successful method to address the challenges of drilling deep wells through salt is simultaneous underreaming while drilling. The use of logging while drilling and rotary steering tools introduces constraints to underreamer placement and over all bottomhole assembly (BHA) design that may limit drilling performance. Chevron's (the operator) current developments in the deepwater Gulf of Mexico are successfully using rotary steerable tools and simultaneous underreaming. Distributed measurement in drilling assemblies is an established method of investigation for the operator; however this study is the first of its kind known for the deepwater Gulf of Mexico. (Marland et al. 2004) Many directional measurement schemes employ measurement at several locations. Distributed vibration measurement is often achievable in a BHA using multiple LWD tools with vibration logging capability. This ability is often marginalized or ignored as realtime telemetry and memory data prioritize formation evaluation data. Vibration measurement complements avoidance of destructive vibration modes by supplying symptomatic information about the downhole dynamic conditions. When vibrations are high, anecdotal evidence is used to diagnose a dynamic condition. Based on that diagnosis one may attempt to mitigate the phenomenon.
Resonance is the tendency of a system to oscillate with greater amplitude at specific frequencies. When present in the downhole environment, this effect limits drilling performance. Often, this issue is resolved by employing Finite Element Analysis (FEA) to predict the critical or natural frequencies, which is validated by observing increased vibration levels when rotating at a critical speed. However, this approach is based solely on circumstantial evidence and does not confirm the vibration is occurring at the predicted frequency.By using multiple Downhole Dynamics Data Recorders (DDDR) in a Bottom Hole Assembly (BHA), the actual vibration frequencies occurring downhole can be calculated and compared to predicted frequencies, thereby validating the FEA model. This technique was recently used to identify the cause of recurring over-torqued connections in a deepwater application. Analysis of the DDDR data, alongside critical speed modeling, revealed that isolated vibrations within the drill collars were allowing connections to work themselves tighter during specific drilling intervals. These measured vibrations were shown to be resonance-induced by matching predicted natural frequencies with the calculated frequencies from the DDDR, where the observed vibrations increased and decreased in magnitude as the rotation corresponded to the modeled frequencies.The innovative visualization of downhole vibration data and the validation of critical speed modeling techniques provide a step forward in drilling assembly optimization efforts. These findings will improve the industry's understanding of critical speed modeling, which in turn will illuminate potential shortcomings of the current methods of vibration mitigation. Practitioners will now be able to design BHAs with more confidence in the results of specific modeling principles, which will ultimately improve performance, reliability and efficiency by eliminating harmful dynamic behaviors.
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