The physical and numerical modeling of sand production and gravel pack in oil wells by designing and manufacturing the machine and presenting a relation estimating sand production rate

Resumo

This research studies the effect of gravel pack size on sand production by designing and manufacturing a machine and a numerical model to simulate sand and gravel pack. This machine and the numerical model make it possible to test different rock along with various fluids under different stress in order to simulate the production of sand and gravel pack.PFC^3D software is applied to create this numerical model. The numerical model consists of sand from 0.22 to 1.1 mm and gravel pack from 3.5 to 4.76, 4.76 to 9.9 to 12.6 and 12.6 to 16.8 mm and the physical model holds gravel from 9 to 4.76 and 4.76 to 9.25. The results from modeling demonstrated that sand is produced the least in the numerical model using gravel from 3.5 to4.76 mm and sand is produced less in the physical model containing gravel pack ranging from 4.76 to 9 mm and the fluid left more output discharge. Moreover, the outcomes from physical modeling proved that as time drags on, the fluid production rate got reduced and then reached to a fixed amount after placing gravel pack. So, it is suggested that gravel pack from 9mm to 4.76mm is more suitable from the viewpoints of fluid production rate and prevention of sand production. Based on dimensional analysis and the results from numerical modeling in a condition without gravel pack, a relation is concluded to estimate sand production rate.