On shale shaker’s structural optimization and performance improvement

Abstract

Recent trends, predictions [1] and overall assessments [2] in extractive industries show there will be changes in many aspects of business, varying from geopolitical issues up to the optimization of working processes and machines. In severe conditions of drilling stations usually based quite a way off to cities and are difficult to access, it is important for all the equipment and machines to operate without failure and provide forecasted level of durability, because unexpected shutdown may lead to halting of production and economic losses. This article is focused on investigation of shale shaker primary characteristics and its behavior during operational loads. In the result of the work an optimization has been performed on the basis of kinematic, strength and NVH performance. Special emphasis was put on the value of vibrational acceleration which reflects an overall possibility of a shale shaker to sift drilling mud. It is a widespread practice to implement optimization tools into different fields. The methods of usage topology optimization can follow the same ideas as it is done in automotive [3] or agricultural industries [4]. Advantage of this paper based on intense cooperation between manufacturing department of the customer and CAE engineers which is the basis of a good design process [5] and overall approach to successful development [6], that includes manufacturing restrictions and that allowed to prove sustainability of the models through validation phases, in the beginning of the project for the initial structure and in the middle of the project for several newly assembled prototypes. So the results of the work have been confirmed by real experiments. Another strong point was a possibility to obtain a feedback right from drilling stations about the condition of optimized shale shaker after it started to work under common operational loads. Constant monitoring, predicting systems and other methods to evaluate overall condition of the machines under operational loads or drilling fluids [7] during the extraction process are important measures in order to prevent unexpected failures. Process and result of this work can be assembled in a step-by-step method for simplified evaluation of shale shakers with vibrators of different amounts and powers. Such method allowed to obtain an overall glimpse on main characteristics, performance, to locate durability weak zones and shows potential for possible structural optimization. The new approach has been used in this research by using the CML-Bench platform, which is a system for managing the simulation driven design projects field of digital design and modeling [8]. This system allows tracking and observing all necessary variables, simulation history and mutual influence of different parameters on different structural changes. Such a method for design engineering allows easily carrying out multidisciplinary optimization of the objects and always being aware of the performance state of the whole system [9].