Sharif Digital Repository

One of the most important challenges in drilling horizontal and directional wells is the optimization of hydraulics and hole cleaning and ECD management. In these wells, poor hole cleaning can lead to formation of cutting bed on the low side of the annulus and cause problems such as stuck pipe or increase in torque and drag. Also poor hydraulic design can lead to decrease in rate of penetration and thus, increase in costs. Mud weight should be placed inside the range of mud window (more than pore pressure and less than formation fracture pressure) in order to prevent kick of reservoir fluid or mud loss.In this thesis, the main goal is to optimize hydraulics and hole cleaning and manage ECD... 

Formation damage in petroleum engineering is an important and fundamental phenomenon. During drilling operation, penetration of either the solid phase of drilling fluid or the base-fluid into the porous medium, reduces the permeability of the formation. While most experiments in the literature have focused on core-scale and beyond, there is lack of pore-scale studies. Moreover, presence of fractures has an undeniable effect on the extent of formation damage. Thus, the main objective of this dissertation is to investigate the effects of fractures on the severity of formation damage caused by the water-based drilling fluid and the mechanisms of formation damage at the pore scale, using glass... 

Currently, drilling such as vertical or straight-hole drilling, i.e. usually less than 30 degrees inclined, or deflection drilling is used to drill at conventional and even unconventional reservoirs around the world to increase recovery factor and productivity. A major challenge is cleaning the hole or removing debris which if not done properly can lead to problems such as stuck pipes. In addition, Improper use of drilling fluid in terms of rheological properties in different stages of drilling operations can cause the well to collapse due to the accumulation of particles in the annular space. The transfer speed of particles is very important in cleaning the well. Inefficient cleaning of... 

Underbalanced drilling is a type of drilling operation in which the pressure of the drilling fluid is less than the pressure of the formation. This pressure difference has created advantages for this method. Less formation damage, reduction of pipe stuck, increasing rate of penetration and production during drilling are the advantages of this method compared to traditional methods. To reduce the pressure of the drilling fluid, very low density fluids should be used. One way to reduce density is to mix a compressible fluid such as gas into water. Due to the difference in density and surface tensile strength of water and gas, these two phases do not combine, so a stable combination of these... 

Drilling fluid is one the most important part of drilling operations in the oil and gas wells digging. From an economic point of view, almost 25 to 45% of drilling costs are allocated to drilling fluid. Drilling fluids consist of several components with different physical and structural forms which can be assumed as complex fluids. Optimum performance of the drilling process could be obtained through the dynamic fluid computation which requires a reliable mathematical model capable to predict transient-state and steady-state rheological behavior of drilling fluid. Generalized Newtonian models, such as the Bingham-plastic model, the power model, and the Herschel-Bulkley model, are the most... 

Formation damage is one of the most important challneges in hydrocarbon production; drilling mud invasion is one of its common types. This damage is caused by the penetration of the drilling fluid into the porous media, which its filtrate and solid pareticles block the pores and cause permeability reduction. The main purpose of this thesis is to investigate the pore-scale mechanisms of the formation damage induced by invert-emulsion drilling fluid and to investigate the effect of adding nanoparticles to the drilling fluid on the severity of the damage using microfluidic technique. According to the latest published articles, there has not been any research conducted at the pore-scale with... 

During all operations in hydrocarbon reservoirs, there is a possibility of formation damage. These damages can reduce the production of fluids from reservoir. One of the major damages that can seriously affect the performance of a reservoir is the damage caused by drilling fluid. The main purpose of this research is to study the main mechanisms of formation damages when using oil-based drilling fluids and fixing or preventing these damages. Once the mechanisms are identified, it is tried to cure the damages but without acid-washing. The alternative method is surfactant-washing which is a surfactant-brine injection. This injection has been done for the first time. This study helps to industry... 

Currently, one of the most important problems in the field of drilling is the issue of drilling fluid loss in different formations. The problem of mud loss has been evident since the beginning of oil and gas well drilling operations, so that oil companies spend millions of dollars annually to solve the problem of mud loss. Problems such as pipe jamming, loss of rig production time, well blowout, loss of a large volume of drilling mud and damage to reservoir formations due to loss of drilling fluid are caused. Regarding the drilling variables, many factors cause the decrease or increase of the loss, the most important of which are the weight on the drill bit, drilling speed, the rate of... 

In past two decades, the direction of oil and gas exploration has moved towards deep water drilling. The pressure and temperature in these zones are ideal for gas hydrate formation that can cause serious and sometimes uncontrollable issues during drilling operations. Gas hydrate formation while drilling can cause problems such as occurrence of kick and blowout, plug chock and kill line, and change in rheology of drilling mud. On the other hand, nowadays, nanotechnology has created an evolution in engineering sciences and because of the wide range of this science, drilling industry is affected like other industries. In the meantime, because of high yield, high stability and various methods of... 

We report on numerical and intelligent modeling of three-dimensional laminar flow of non-Newtonian fluids driven by axial pressure gradient in annular media consisting of a coaxially rotating inner cylinder. This is an example of a rotating Couette flow with vast applications in food, oil and gas, and chemical engineering industries. We study the dynamics of pressure in and the velocities (in three directions X, Y and Z) of every grid in presence of rotation and without that by means of CFD. Afterward, we develop a novel predictive model based on an Artificial Neural Network (ANN). The hybrid ANN framework is trained and tested by over 100000 data which collected by CFD. We then perform...