| dc.description.abstract | Borehole stability is controlled by various parameters such as rock strength, rock deformation properties, in-situ stress, borehole trajectory, shale swelling, pore pressure change due to osmosis, overbalance mud weight and temperature. The objective of this work is to construct analytical and numerical equations to predict borehole failure including all these parameters and comprehensively evaluate how to improve the borehole instability caused by these parameters.
Analytical solutions are developed for inclined wells including in-situ stress, shale swelling, pore pressure change due to osmosis, overbalance mud weight and temperature. A numerical model is developed for 3D inclined wells with orthotropic formation and layered formation. Using the analytical and numerical models, stress state around inclined wells is evaluated. The breakout angle is predicted using Mohr-Coulomb, Mogi, Lade and Drucker-Prager failure theories. Polar diagrams of mud weights are compared to judge the effect of each parameters and the magnitude predicted by the different failure theories.
Among these parameters, shale swelling and pore pressure change due to osmosis are the most difficult to estimate. Using with the laboratory measured swelling from cores obtained from various formations, the magnitude to induce breakouts caused by the swelling is the largest comparing with other parameters. Therefore, when shale stability problems occur, we need to estimate the magnitude of shale swelling and osmosis due to water potential difference. Then, to overcome the shale stability problem, we evaluated the sensitivity of human controllable parameters on borehole stability. The parameters which can be controlled by a drilling engineer are overbalance, type of mud, borehole temperature and borehole trajectory. If the shale swelling is small, the borehole stability is improved by the mud weight. However, from the swelling tests from the cores of Nankai-Trough, we estimated unless we use a swelling inhibitor to reduce the swelling less than 0.1%, the well is not possible to drill through. Actually, the well was abandoned due to instability after trying side track several times.
Unlike previous works, this thesis uses all important parameters (swelling, temperature, pore pressure, orthotropic formation, layered formation) to estimate the stresses around inclined wells. Failure analysis includes Mohr, Mogi, Lade and Drucker-Prager. Finally, the polar diagrams of critical mud weight are used to judge whether we can choose well trajectory, orientation with respect to bedding planes, mud weight, shale inhibitor, and temperature to stabilize the borehole. | en |
