Zakeri, A., Behjani, M.A. and Hassanpour, A. orcid.org/0000-0002-7756-1506 (2024) Fully Coupled CFD–DEM Simulation of Oil Well Hole Cleaning: Effect of Mud Hydrodynamics on Cuttings Transport. Processes, 12 (4). 784. ISSN 2227-9717
Abstract
This paper presents a coupled computational fluid dynamics–discrete element method (CFD–DEM) simulation to predict cuttings transport by the drilling fluid (mud) in different oil well drilling conditions. The mud rheology is expressed by the Herschel–Bulkley behaviour and modelled in a Eulerian framework (CFD), while the cuttings are modelled using the Lagrangian approach (DEM). In this work, the effects of drill string rotation, inclination angle, cutting size, mud rheology, and annular velocity on cleaning efficiency are investigated. It is found that increasing the well deviation from vertical to horizontal leads to a higher cuttings concentration. However, at low annular velocity, the cuttings concentration for the inclined (45-degree) annulus is found to be higher than the horizontal one due to the sliding motion of cuttings on the lower section of the annulus. Overall, the drill pipe rotation has little effect on decreasing the cuttings concentration, but the effect is more pronounced at low annular velocity.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2024 by the authors. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | CFD–DEM; multiphase flow; oil well drilling; mud rheology; particle transport |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Chemical & Process Engineering (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 05 Jul 2024 11:06 |
Last Modified: | 05 Jul 2024 11:06 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/pr12040784 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:213798 |