A new wireline 2-in-1 inflatable-packer system for aquifer characterization

Abstract

The application of inflatable-packer testing is commonly used in all sorts of geotechnical investigations. During the test, a frequently ignored problem is the unforeseen occurrence of leakage around the packers, which leads to a high risk to wellbore failure as well as equipment stuck. For the conventional design, once one of the two packer subjects to leakage, the field test would have to be immediately terminated. To cope with such problem, as proposed in this study, a modification of the pneumatic control device towards a 2-in-1 inflatable-packer system accompanying with the stratified analysis of hydrostatic pressure is required. The key idea is to let each packer element to be inflated separately and individually, as such their pneumatic responses can be fed to different control valves for diverse control tasks, of which the most crucial one is the in-situ conversion between single and double packer testing mode.