Abstract
Plunger pumps are widely used in oil pumping units around the world. The water content of the wellbore is increasing along with the development progress, so the lubricating capacity of the well fluids between the plunger and barrel is decreasing correspondingly. Commonly, the substrate material of the plunger and barrel are stainless steel, and the plunger surface is usually covered with nickel-based coating. Therefore, the performance of the plunger and barrel has been affected due to poor lubrication and eccentric wear. Non-smooth surfaces have been proven to improve the tribology performance in many cases. A surface texturing plunger covered with specific dimples has been prepared by using laser surface texturing technology. The morphology of the surface texturing plunger was characterized and analyzed. The tribology performance of surface texturing plunger samples was tested using standard friction and wear test machines with oil and water lubrication, respectively. The results indicated that surface texturing could effectively reduce the coefficient of friction, and the wear resistance of the surface textured samples has been improved to some extent.
Highlights
There are around more than one million mechanical recovery wells, 90% of which are plunger pump wells
Most oilfields have entered the middle and late stages of development, and many problems are induced by sand production, high water cut, and so on, which results in wear loss, leakage, corrosion, and other failures of pumps [1]
Round dimples with a diameter of about 100 μm and a depth of about 10 μm were fabricated on the plunger surface using laser surface texturing technology
Summary
There are around more than one million mechanical recovery wells, 90% of which are plunger pump wells. Non-smooth surfaces have been intensively studied in reducing friction and improving anti-wear properties in mechanical components [3,4,5,6]. Technology is widely used to fabricate specific non-smooth surfaces, and the effect of some surface textures on reducing friction and improving anti-wear properties has been theoretically predicted and experimentally verified [7,8,9]. Etsion’s studies indicated that the LST enhanced hydrodynamic and hydrostatic lubrication of mechanical seals analytically and experimentally, and there was a significant improvement in the load capacity, anti-wear and friction coefficient, and a substantial reduction in wear and surface damage in comparison with untextured surfaces [10,11]. The tribological performance of surface texturing plunger samples was tested by using standard friction and wear test machine with the oil and water lubricating, respectively
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