ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mech. Eng.
Sec. Tribology
Volume 11 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmech.2025.1554211
This article is part of the Research TopicTribological Issues of Key Components in Transmission SystemsView all articles
Mechanical characteristics analysis of the downhole completion string in the open hole section of a small wellbore
Provisionally accepted
- School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
For horizontal wells with small wellbores and large-diameter pipe strings, pipe sticking is prone to occur during oilfield completion operations. Avoiding pipe sticking can effectively save construction costs. In this paper, dynamics and Hertz contact theory are adopted, taking into account the influence of small wellbores and large-diameter pipe strings. Based on the principle of scaling, an experimental bench for the running-in of completion pipe strings is built, and a three-dimensional finite element model for analyzing the axial force and contact force of the completion pipe strings in the open-hole staged fracturing is established. The variation laws of the wellhead axial force, axial force along the well depth and contact force during the running-in process of the completion pipe strings are analyzed. The results show that with the increase in the packer size and friction coefficient in the open-hole section and the decrease in the radius of the open-hole section, the wellhead axial force will decrease, and the contact force will increase accordingly. The neutral point moves upward, the length of the pipe string section under axial pressure increases, and the pipe strings with buckling deformation are all under axial pressure. The pipe string will first buckle near the kick-off point, and then the buckling will extend upward along the straight section from the kick-off point.Moreover, the closer to the kick-off point, the more severe the buckling.The research in this paper provides a theoretical basis for the decision-making of the running-in of completion pipe strings.
Keywords: Open-hole section, small wellbores, Mechanical characteristics, Completion string, buckling of pipe string
Received: 01 Jan 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dong, Yang, Li and Zhu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Xiaohua Zhu, School of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, 610500, Sichuan Province, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.