Particulate Modeling of Sand Production Using Coupled DEM-LBM

Abstract

Sand production is a complex phenomenon caused by the erosion of borehole walls during the extraction of hydrocarbons. In this paper, the sanding process in a typical Thick-Walled Hollow Cylinder (TWHC) test is numerically simulated. The main objective of the study is to model the particulate mechanism of sand production in granular assemblies with different bonding conditions and examine the effects of parameters such as stress level and cavity size on the sanding model. Due to the discrete nature of sand particles, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) is chosen to model solid particles, and the Lattice-Boltzmann Method (LBM) is implemented to simulate fluid flow through the solid particulate medium. A computer program is developed using the Immersed Moving Boundary (IMB) approach to couple the two methods and model fluid–solid interactions. After the program is validated, the simulations were conducted on 2D models representing cross-sections of TWHC samples under radial fluid flow. The results show that the developed program is able to capture complicated stages of sand production already observed in experiments. The program also proves to be a promising tool in the parametric study of sand production. It successfully simulates different aspects of the sanding phenomenon, including the scale effect, the extension of failure zones in samples under incremental stress, and the stress relaxation during rapid particle erosion.

On the stress dependency of sand production coefficient in hydro-dynamical sanding criteria

“…To this end, we deduce empirical values for the sand production coefficient λ 2 by best fitting the experimental data of 12 with numerical simulations. The results show that λ 2 does indeed have a fairly smooth dependence on the external conditions.…”

“…Sand production, can be quantified by a volume of produced solids against time graph, exhibiting the physical response of the rock under given external stress and flow conditions. [7][8][9][10][11][12] Papamichos et al, in (2001) 13 claimed, through laboratory experiments on hollow cylinder tests, that plastic yielding is the cause of micro-cracks, resulting from the application of external loads, which may serve as erosion starting points. However, this statement was challenged by other investigators by conducting experiments under true triaxial stress state on cubic samples which have shown that yielding of the material around the wellbore surface is not necessarily an indicator for on-setting sand production.…”

Research advance of numerical simulation methods for sand production prediction of unconsolidated sandstone

“…Also, can be used to study the basic mechanism of sand production on an experimental scale (Ghassemi and Pak, 2015;Han and Cundall, 2017) and analyze the permeability before and after sand production and the evolution process of the complex force chain network inside the model (Xia et al, 2022). On the basis of predecessors, Honari et al simulated different stages of sand production by integrating Immersion Moving Boundary (IMB) method, including scale effect, extension of failure zone under incremental stress, and stress change during particle erosion (Honari and Hosseininia, 2021). The study believed that the smaller the pore diameter and the greater the stress value, the easier the sand production.…”

Effect of Transmission Lines Arrangement on Drag and Lift Coefficients: A Numerical Study

“…where ߩ is the fluid density, u is the fluid velocity, and ‫‬ is the fluid pressure. To calculate the flow, the lattice Boltzmann method is adopted [13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24], whose evolution equation is…”