Abstract
High-bentonite mud (HBM) is a water-based drilling fluid characterized by its remarkable improvement in cutting removal and hole cleaning efficiency. Periodic monitoring of the rheological properties of HBM is mandatory for optimizing the drilling operation. The objective of this study is to develop new sets of correlations using artificial neural network (ANN) to predict the rheological parameters of HBM while drilling using the frequent measurements, every 15 to 20 min, of mud density (MD) and Marsh funnel viscosity (FV). The ANN models were developed using 200 field data points. The dataset was divided into 70:30 ratios for training and testing the ANN models respectively. The optimized ANN models showed a significant match between the predicted and the measured rheological properties with a high correlation coefficient (R) higher than 0.90 and a maximum average absolute percentage error (AAPE) of 6%. New empirical correlations were extracted from the ANN models to estimate plastic viscosity (PV), yield point (YP), and apparent viscosity (AV) directly without running the models for easier and practical application. The results obtained from AV empirical correlation outperformed the previously published correlations in terms of R and AAPE.
Highlights
Drilling Fluids play a pivotal role during the drilling operation [1]
The main objective of this study is to identify the rheological flow model of High-Bentonite Mud (HBM) experimentally and develop new sets of correlations using artificial neural networks to estimate the rheological parameters of HBM from available
The high accuracy of the developed model can be inferred from the high R-value of 0.94 for the training process and 0.92 for the testing process in addition to the low average absolute percentage error (AAPE) of 2.95% and 4.8% for the training and testing respectively
Summary
Drilling Fluids play a pivotal role during the drilling operation [1]. There are three main categories of the drilling fluid, namely water-based mud, oil-based mud, and synthetic-based mud, used to enhance the drilling operation performance under downhole conditions of pressure and temperature [2].The main function of a drilling fluid is to clean the wellbore by lifting the drilled cuttings from the bottom of the hole up to the surface; the cuttings are treated by the solid control equipment before being pumped again into the well [3]. There are three main categories of the drilling fluid, namely water-based mud, oil-based mud, and synthetic-based mud, used to enhance the drilling operation performance under downhole conditions of pressure and temperature [2]. Special viscous mud (known as spud mud) is commonly used while drilling surface sections to help remove large cuttings out of the drilled hole [4]. It enhances wellbore stability by forming an impermeable filter cake and minimize fluid loss by stopping mud filtration [5]
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