Study on the Effect of Fracturing Pump Start and Stop on Tubing Fluid-Structure Interaction Vibration in HPHT Wells via MOC

Abstract

The processes of HTHP well fracturing, oil drive, and gas recovery are accompanied by the non-stationary flow of medium in the tubing, which may lead to periodic vibration and cause the failure and fatigue of the tubing, thread leakage, and bending deformation. In this paper, a fluid–structure interaction model with 4-equation was established, which considered the unsteady flow of fluid and the motion state of tubing during the periodic injection, pump start, and shutdown of fluid in the tubing. Further, the discrete solution of MOC was used to obtain the variation of fluid flow rate and pressure, tubing vibration rate, frequency, and additional stress with time. The resonance construction parameters corresponding to different tubing diameters were analyzed by discussing the effects of different start and shutdown times as well as pressure on the tubing vibration parameters. The results show that under the periodic injection condition, increasing the tubing diameter or start inside pressure would lead to a sharp increase in the axial additional stress of the tubing generated by fluid–structure interaction, which is not conducive to the safety protection of the tubing. When the pump was shutdown, excessively short operation times and high pressure in the tubing would lead to excessive transient loads in addition to resonance, which would cause damage to the pipeline. Finally, corresponding to the above analysis results, this paper proposes the optimal injection parameters to avoid the generation of resonance, which provides a theoretical basis and reference range for the safe service conditions of the tubing.