Smart Loss Circulation Materials for Drilling Highly Fractured Zones

Abstract

Abstract Lost circulation materials (LCMs) have played an essential part when trying to decrease the heavy financial costs resulting from mud loss and non-productive time. However, the LCMs used in the field today still have drawbacks such as failure to work in a high pressure - high temperature environment, damage to production zones, inability to seal big fractures and plugging the drilling tools. In this paper, we introduce a new smart lost circulation material made out of anionic shape memory polymers and it does not have the disadvantages that the LCMs experience in the field today. The smart LCMs has the ability to be programmed to change in shape, bridge and expand when stimulated by a specific temperature. A fully coupled simulation is developed to test the sealing efficiency of the newly introduced smart LCMs. Various particle size distributions and fracture sizes were used to further understand the properties of the smart LCM. The proposed smart LCM shows efficacious sealing of fractures and could be the next smart solution for lost circulation.