Asymptotic model of laminar and turbulent displacement flows in annular space

Frederico Carvalho Gomes¹; Simone Bochner de Araujo¹; Marcio da Silveira Carvalho¹

¹ PUC-Rio

doi:10.20906/CPS/COB-2015-2338

Resumo

In the construction of oil and gas wells, the cementing process is an important step. Displacing fluids in downhole conditions for long distances is a complex task, affecting several steps on well construction. Cementing gains relevance in the moment that fluid contamination compromises cement sheath integrity and consequently zonal isolation. Hence, fluid properties and process conditions should be designed to minimize non-uniformities on the displacement front. A complete analysis of the annular displacement flow that occurs during cementing is extremely complex, because of the presence of different liquids that often present non-Newtonian characteristic and the flow is three dimensional and transient. In some cases, the flow in the lower viscosity liquid phase may become turbulent. A complete model has a prohibitive high computational cost. Simplified models are available in the literature and are used by the oil industry in commercial simulation software for cementing. The available models are not able to accurately describe turbulent flow regime. In this work, we extend the lubrication based model in cylindrical coordinates developed before to include turbulent flow regimes and inner cylinder rotation.

Palavras-chave: Cementing Process; Lubrication theory