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Accurately identifying the location of loss zone after lost circulation is the key to subsequent plugging operation. In view of the difficulty of identifying the location of lost circulation zone, a method of identifying the location of loss zone by transient pressure wave signal is proposed. When lost circulation occurs, transient back pressure is applied to the wellhead at the surface choke manifold to produce transient pressure wave. The transient pressure wave propagates downward from the wellhead. The propagation process of transient pressure wave in an annulus system is analyzed, and the position of loss zone is determined according to the change of pressure signal at the choke manifold. Based on the simulation of this method, relevant experiments are also carried out. Aiming at the problem of excessive noise of the pressure wave signal collected in the experiment, variational modal decomposition (VMD) is used to decompose the signal into multiple band-limited intrinsic mode function (BIMF) components. Combined with a Hilbert spectrum, the time–frequency characteristics and energy distribution of each BIMF component are analyzed in turn. The main frequency component is selected to reconstruct the signal to achieve the denoising effect. On this basis, a wavelet modulus maxima method is used to decompose the denoised signal, extract the characteristic points of the signal, identify the loss circulation information in the signal, and then identify the thief zone position by a time–domain method. Through experimental verification, the existence of loss zone will affect the change trend of pressure wave; a VMD–wavelet modulus maxima algorithm can effectively remove the noise of the pressure wave signal and locate the pressure change point. The experimental recognition error range of this method is 0.10–9.22%, which has certain guiding significance for field application.

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