Simulation of Erosion in Drilling Tools for Oil and Gas Industry

Abstract

Erosion is a form of wear that will cause loss of material. It has been reported in the drilling tools used in the oil and gas industry, and it can in some cases severely shorten the life of the tools. In spite of its importance, there has been virtually no attention paid to it in drilling engineering research. This paper focuses on the modeling of erosion and the application of the developed models to improve the design of drilling tools. Mechanism of erosion, which is controlled primarily by the impact velocity and angle, has been formulated based on experimental and theoretical work done in material science. Algorithms were developed for transient simulation of the erosion of any surface in 2-D geometry. Based on this, an "Erosion Simulator 1 " has been written, which is able, in combination with any CFD software, to simulate erosion in down-hole tools. Actual data from TESCO Corporation casing drilling tools 2 has been used to calibrate the physics of the process and validate the software. The simulator has been used to modify the geometry of the under-reamer casing-drilling tool, which resulted in a substantial decrease in erosion rate and therefore increase in the life of the tool.