Influential mechanism of operational parameters on internal resonance of drill strings by numerical simulations

Abstract

Abstract Drill string vibration is highly conductive to drill string fatigue and component failure. In this study, a finite element model of a drill string with bottom hole assembly (BHA) is constructed to investigate the effect of different operational parameters, such as different string length, density, pressure, and velocity of drilling fluid on drill string natural frequencies, and thus internal resonance by considering fluid-structure interaction (FSI) in ANSYS. Numerical simulations demonstrate that the natural frequencies decrease as the length of the drill string increases, which is especially true for the axial mode. The condition of 1:1 internal resonance between the axial and torsional modes only occurs when the length of drill string is sufficiently high. Nevertheless, this resonance fades away in the presence of fluid. The increment of fluid density slightly increases the natural frequency in lateral mode, whereas decreases that in axial mode. On the other hand, this effect of density is negligible in the torsional mode. The natural frequencies for axial, torsional and lateral modes decrease as the fluid velocity increases, and the impact of fluid pressure on natural frequency is almost not observable. The numerical results for the case without drill fluid are in qualitative agreement with analytical solutions. when considing the effect of drill length on natural frequency.