Experimental Model Design for Oilwell Drilling Rig Circulation System Studies, Part I

Abstract

In oil and gas industry, flow through the annulus between the rotating wall and stationary wall is a crucial issue, mainly for oil and gas well drilling processes. Good understanding of the flow behavior of drilling fluids between rotating drill pipes and   open or cased hole is an essential element for successful and trouble free drilling operations. So in order to understand the behavior of flow through an annulus in most cases it wise to experimentally investigate the flow behavior. In most cases building an experimental model with real dimensions is a big challenge, also the large number of the parameters that associated with the physical phenomenon being studied may extra complicates the situation, so application of dimensional analysis and similarity approach will help in reducing the number of the parameters into limited number of dimensionless groups. In this part of the experimental model design, a dimensional analysis of the experimental model to be built were performed, it was found that, dimensional analysis helped in reducing the large number of the experimental parameters model dimensions to small limited number of dimensionless groups.