Fatigue Life of Thread Connection for Casing Drilling under Tension and Torsion

Abstract

Casing drilling technique which has been dramatically developing is a revolution in petroleum industry and has aroused great concerns. The fatigue failure of casing thread connection is a critical issue for using. Therefore, to study the fatigue failure of casing connection is an important issue for understand the life of casing drilling. For the notched element, how to estimate the life and which parameter (equivalent stress, equivalent strain ,or the strain in the root )represent the damage under fatigue condition is still a problem. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the fatigue life of notch element under multiaxial stresses and to find out the damage parameter so as to predict the life of notch element. First specimen were machined with the same notch geometer dimension as the casing thread connection, fatigue tests with tension and torsion loading were carried out by fatigue test machine , for stress levels designed to obtain S-N lifetime curve. The stress and strain for the connections subjected to proportional loading were analyzed by elastic-plastic finite element method. The stress-strain state for notched specimens subjected to constant amplitude proportional multiaxial loadings was also calculated and analyzed by the finite element model. Take the equivalent stress, equivalent strain and the strain by FEM in the root into the prediction model, the strain by FEM has a good agreement with the experiment.But the results from the equivalent stress and equivalent strain also in good agreement with the experiment and is thought to be a simple prediction way.