Hole Cleaning Performance of V-Shaped Hole Cleaning Device in Horizontal Well Drilling: Numerical Modeling and Experiments

Abstract

The application of hole cleaning devices can effectively solve the hole cleaning problem during the drilling of horizontal wells. Improving the hole cleaning performance is directly related to subsequent drilling time and cost. In this paper, the solid–liquid two-phase hydrodynamic characteristics under the action of the V-shaped hole cleaning device for drilling horizontal wells were studied experimentally and numerically. The decay law of spiral flow induced by the V-shaped hole cleaning device was obtained numerically using the commercial CFD code “Fluent” by changing the blade rotational speed, blade helix angle, and consistency coefficient of drilling fluid. The helix angle will cause the flow direction of local fluid to deflect. The swirl intensity of spiral flow increases significantly with an increase in rotational speed. The hole cleaning performance was better when the helix angle was from about 10 to 20 degrees. Increasing the fluid consistency coefficient will rapidly make the spiral flow decay, resulting in a shorter effective action distance and a worse hole cleaning effect. The simulation results were validated against the experimental results of the flow loop. Both experimental and simulation results showed that the hole cleaning performance was improved by using the V-shaped hole cleaning device. The very good agreement achieved between the results has presented an opportunity to study the hole cleaning effect of a hole cleaning device in unsteady state conditions. The results will provide theoretical guidance for efficient hole cleaning using V-shaped hole cleaning devices for horizontal well drilling.