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Fluidic Drag in Horizontal Directional Drilling and its Application in Specific Energy
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- Author / Creator
- Faghih, Ashkan
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Horizontal Directional Drilling (HDD) is one of the most rapidly growing technologies for utility installation under surface obstacles. The rapid growth in application of HDD has not accompanied the same level of development in engineering design procedures and efficient drilling techniques. Rational engineering design and maximized drill rate are of a great value particularly in longer HDD crossings where the project budgets are in the order of millions of dollars and daily delays cost tens of thousands of dollars (Baumert and Allouche, 2002).
To improve predictions of pulling load by current design practices, exact equations for annular flow are derived in this thesis to accurately compute the fluidic drag during HDD operations. Comparisons of the exact solution with the predictions by design procedures such as PRCI and ASTM 1962 reveal that PRCI overestimates the fluidic drag while ASTM F1962 results in a better estimation.
To maximize the rate of penetration and identify underground drilling risks, the concept of Specific Energy (SE) of drilling is proposed here to be used in HDD. SE has been implemented successfully in oil and gas industry as a useful efficiency indicator of drilling operations. To calculate the real SE used by the bit to excavate the material, downhole drilling data should be measured during the process. Utilization of sophisticated downhole measuring tools is not economical in HDD. Therefore, a mechanical model is developed to calculate downhole loads and torques using the result of the previous analysis on the fluidic drag. Finally, an example application of SE in HDD is illustrated in a case study and the SE analysis for surface and downhole conditions are presented. -
- Subjects / Keywords
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- Graduation date
- Fall 2014
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- Type of Item
- Thesis
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- Degree
- Master of Science
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- License
- This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.