The advantage of composite materials used in downhole cutting tools

Abstract

One of the important reserves for the growth of oil and gas production is the acceleration of emergency recovery work in production and exploration wells at minimal cost. A significant amount of work in downhole conditions is performed using downhole destructive and cutting tools. Each oil and gas producing country annually uses more than 100 standard sizes, thousands of cutting tool sets: downhole, annular, combined, pilot, internal and external pipe cutters, as well as reamers for cutting side “windows” in production strings. Therefore, the need for them is growing significantly every year. The conducted experiments show that during the operation of cutting tools, the working abrasive-cutting part of the tool wears out and collapses, but the body, other elements and the connecting thread remain suitable for further operation. Therefore, the restoration of working bodies, consisting of crushed particles of used borehole cutting tools, is an urgent scientific and technical task for the oil and gas industry. When repairing oil and gas wells, as well as eliminating the most complex accidents, more than a hundred standard sizes of downhole cutting and destructive tools are used. Currently, an acute shortage of this equipment in oilfield facilities makes it necessary to reconsider the technologies for restoring downhole cutting and destructive tools and introduce them into production. The conducted studies show that there is not enough information about the thickness and height of the layers of the material applied to the damaged area of the cutting and destructive tool, as well as the information necessary for the optimal mode of its operation and its effectiveness after restoration. Composite materials are widely used in the preparation of cutting-chopping and destructive elements of oil-field tools and equipment used in the drilling, operation and repair of wells. In order to increase the cutting capacity of the cutting part of the tool, it is necessary to investigate the advantages of tungsten-carbide (TC) type composite materials compared to other materials and ensure their resistance to high temperatures. As a result of theoretical studies, the stress-deformation state of the contact areas of the composite elements, where the working areas of the cutting and destructive tools are reinforced, and the dependence of the productivity of the composite materials on the speed of transition to metal and the sizes of the composite grains were determined by using the finite element method (two-dimensional simplex elements).