Study of Sand Production Using Geomechanical and Hydro-Mechanical Models

Abstract

Sand production is a complicated physical process depending on rock mechanical properties and flow of fluid in the reservoir. When it comes to sand production phenomenon, many researchers applied the Geomechanical model to predict the pressure for the onset of sand production in the reservoir. However, the mass of produced sand is difficult to determine due to the complexity of rock behavior as well as fluid behavior in porous media. In order to solve this problem, there are some Hydro – Mechanical models that can evaluate sand production rate. As these models require input parameters obtained by core analysis and use a large empirical correlation, they are still not used popularly because of the diversity of reservoirs behavior in the world. In addition, the reliability of these models is still in question because no comparison between these empirical models has been studied. The onset of sand production is estimated using the bottomhole pressure that makes the maximum effective tangential compressive stress equal or higher than the rock strength (failure criteria), which is usually known as critical bottomhole pressure (CBHP). Combining with Hydro – Mechanical model, the main objective of this work aims to develop a numerical model that can solve the complexity of the governing equations relating to sand production. The outcome of this study depicts sand production rate versus time as well as the change of porosity versus space and time. In this paper, the Geomechanical model coupled with Hydro – Mechanical model is applied to calibrate the empirical parameters.