Investigation of Inducing Vibration to Reduce Friction of Coiled Tubing in Deep Drilling Operations

Abstract

This work examines the buckling behavior of constrained horizontal tubular in a cylinder subjected to axial compression force. Such configurations are of interest to coiled tubing (CT) and conventional hydrocarbon drilling. When compression force is applied beyond a critical value the coiled tubing (CT) will buckle forming sinusoidal wave and with increasing the load the CT ultimately goes into a helical configuration. The friction is introduced due to the contact between the CT and the borehole wall. Increasing the CT friction eventually leads to lock-up length beyond which the drilling cannot proceed further. Vibration is a well-known technique to reduce friction between contacting bodies in many engineering systems. An in-house experimental setup is developed to imitate the wellbore being drilled with the presence of drilling fluids and vibrating facility that has the capability to vibrate the CT axially. The setup is employed to examine the effects of amplitude and frequency of vibration on the axial force transfer and weight on bit (WOB) at normal and high temperature environments. Results show that both amplitude and frequency have significant effects in reducing the friction and they alter the buckling behavior on both normal and high temperature.