Bulletin of the American Physical Society
APS April Meeting 2011
Volume 56, Number 4
Saturday–Tuesday, April 30–May 3 2011; Anaheim, California
Session Q5: Physics and Engineering of Deep Water Drilling |
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Sponsoring Units: FPS Chair: Peter D. Zimmerman, King's College London Room: Royal AB |
Monday, May 2, 2011 10:45AM - 11:21AM |
Q5.00001: Physics and the Quest for Hydrocarbons Invited Speaker: This talk contains brief overviews of forecast demand, petroleum geology, petrophysics, formation evaluation, and measurements made while drilling. Several examples show how physics is used to locate and to determine the volume and type of hydrocarbons, the pressure of subsurface fluids, and the formation permeability. Sophisticated instruments built into drill collars measure the subsurface properties at and behind the drill bit. Such measurements include electromagnetic propagation, Compton scattering, neutron scattering, nuclear spectroscopy, and magnetic resonance, among others. The hostile drilling environment (high temperatures, high pressures, and high shock levels) create challenging problems for the physicist and engineer who design such instruments. [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, May 2, 2011 11:21AM - 11:57AM |
Q5.00002: An Introduction to Deepwater Drilling Invited Speaker: This presentation is an introduction to deepwater drilling, some of the nomenclature, processes, and ``how things work,'' including illustrations of several of the more complex and technically challenging operational situations encountered in deepwater drilling operations. Drilling and well construction activities are carried out in water depths from just a few feet, to over 10,000 feet. Subsurface pressures encountered may be as high as 35,000 psi, with temperatures over 500 degrees F. Some of the technical aspects of deep water drilling include: 1) locating the well 2) rig types 3) well types 4) rig components 5) drill bits, drill string assemblies, bottom-hole assemblies 6) inclined and horizontal well trajectories 7) anisotropic in-situ earth stresses and operationally induced stresses 8) anisotropic, non-linear, hysteretic, and time-dependent rock behavior 9) steady-state and transient fluid flow and formation pressures 10) complex static and dynamic temperature distributions 11) eccentric wellbore geometries 12) wellbore stability 13) lost circulation 14) formation pressure control 15) sea floor completions 16) robotic operations [Preview Abstract] |
Monday, May 2, 2011 11:57AM - 12:33PM |
Q5.00003: Viscoelastic Muds---Top-Kill in Rapidly Flowing Wells Invited Speaker: The attempted ``top-kill'' of the blown out Macondo (Deepwater Horizon) oil well by pumping a dense drilling ``mud'', {\it i.e.\/}, a slurry of dense minerals, from above failed. This failure may be attributed to a Kelvin-Helmholtz instability in the gravity driven counterflow between the descending ``mud'' and the rapidly upwelling crude oil. The instability produced turbulence that dispersed the denser fluid into small packets (if miscible with the oil) or droplets (if immiscible). Estimates from turbulence theory imply that the packets or droplets are so small (sub-mm) that their settling speed in the oil is less than the upwelling speed, with the consequence that the ``mud'' is spat out of the well, as observed, rather than descending to fill the bottom of the well bore and providing the hdyrodstatic head required to ``kill'' the well. The addition of a shear-thickening or viscoelastic polymer to the ``mud'' may suppress the turbulence and prevent its dispersal. Laboratory experiments with viscoelastic surrogate ``muds'' show complete turbulence suppression at the relevant speeds, with the viscoelastic fluid descending as a coherent slug. These experiments find several new phenomena. At high flow rates there is a viscoelastic analogue of the viscous buckling instability. At low flow rates suppression of the Plateau-Rayleigh instability combined with the dependence of viscous flow rate on diameter leads to the formation of globules on a looping filament. [Preview Abstract] |
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