Effect of Volumetric Failure on Sand Production in Oil-Wellbores

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Abstract Sand production is a major problem being faced by operating oil companies for many years. Sand problems are known to have increased production costs considerably. To-date, the roles of shear and tensile failure modes have been well thought out in studying sand production, but the contribution of volumetric failure mechanism in this phenomenon has been ignored. Even though volumetric failure mechanism has been well studied in looking into the phenomenon of land subsidence, but its role in sand production has been neglected in the past. In this paper, the contribution of this mechanism in sand production is addressed. In numerical studies, a finite difference based program was used. This program captures the fluid/solid interaction with complete rigor. In the experimental part, uniaxial strain condition was applied on some synthetic samples to examine volumetric failure mechanism, while traditional triaxial tests were performed on the same type of samples to learn about shear characteristic of the material. The mechanical parameters obtained from these tests were used in the numerical model that covers all tensile, shear and volumetric failure mechanisms. By using numerical and experimental means, it was discovered that volumetric failure mode, i.e. pore collapse, has a significant contribution in sanding. Initially at the well face, only shear and tensile failure may take place, but pore collapse can be triggered in a zone very close to the cavity hole. Subsequent to production of shear or tensile failed material from the open face, pore collapse induced disintegrated material may be exposed to cavity face, and potentially massive sanding may take place.