CFD Simulation of the Effect of Drill Pipe Rotation on Cuttings Transport in Horizontal Wellbore using Newtonian Fluid

Good drilling program requires an effective and efficient transportation of cuttings out of the hole. When drilling horizontal wells, hole cleaning process become more complex, therefore proper design of hydraulic parameters is crucial. Cuttings transport through annulus is affected by numerous parameters such as flow rate, eccentricity, drill pipe rotation, angle of inclination, etc. Predicting effective cuttings transport requires simultaneous consideration of all these parameters, which make it essential to study the influence of these parameters in cuttings bed development and erosion. Improper hole cleaning will cause major costly drilling problems such as a slower rate of penetration, increase of pipe sticking potential, higher drag and torque, formation fractures and wellbore steering problems. This project aims to analyze the effect of drill pipe rotation on cuttings transportation in horizontal wellbores. For this purpose, Computational fluid dynamic (CFD) ANSYS 15.0 CFX was utilized to model the design at various pipe rotation speeds, fluid velocities, and a constant rate of penetrations of 60 ft/hr. The performance of the proposed model is compared with an experimental study from literature.