Experimental Study on the Effect of Rock Mechanical Properties and Fracture Morphology Features on Lost Circulation

Abstract

Summary At present, lost circulation remains a complicated drilling problem in fractured formations that needs to be addressed urgently. However, the influence of actual rock mechanical properties (RMP) and fracture morphological features (FMF) on lost circulation is easily ignored in the current research on leakage mechanism and evaluation, which may lead to deviation from the analysis results, thus affecting the success rate of plugging treatments. Therefore, the complicated effects have been investigated using the improved plugging experimental instruments in this paper. The results indicate that both RMP and FMF have a prominent influence on the plugging and sealing effects of plugging slurries. This research suggests that the bridging and plugging capabilities of the slurry can be improved by increasing the type and amount of lost circulation materials (LCM). Moreover, depending on the fracture morphology difference, the same plugging slurry will have different plugging effects on the same width-size opening fracture channel. In addition, a novel evaluation method is developed to assess the effective sealing ability of plugging slurry against formation fractures, which has been successfully applied in the field. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first evaluation method that investigates simultaneously the mechanical properties of rocks and fracture characteristics of formations. The novel evaluation method incorporates the critical parameters of the lost circulation effect into the design of the plugging evaluation model. Thus, the proposed method can be used to quantitatively evaluate the plugging capability of the LCM and slurries and the loss capacity of the loss channels. However, the higher plugging coefficient (λ) of the slurry does not necessarily mean that the plugging slurry has a stronger plugging capacity (SP). Adopting the suitable fracture channel model can avoid overestimating or underestimating the plugging capability of the LCM slurries. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the formula design of the LCM slurry in combination with the geological engineering background. This perception has significant implications for the analysis of the lost circulation mechanisms and the optimization formula design of the plugging slurries.