PERPENDICULAR NUMERICAL TRIAL FOR HORIZONTAL WELL GRAVEL-PACKING OPTIMIZATION

The operation parameters for horizontal well gravel-packing concern slurry pump rate, gravel concentration, carrier fluid viscosity, wash-pipe diameter and filtration velocity. Because the mechanism of these parameters affecting the packing effect is very complicated, it’s difficult to optimize them by normal method. In this paper, according to perpendicular form, the values for all levels of these parameters are permuted to make up of a few operation parameter combinations. The evaluation index of packing effect for every combination is calculated by the simulation program. Then, the optimum parameter combination is found out from all of results by direct analysis method, the re-simulation of which indicates that the packing effect of the optimum combination is really excellent. The variance analysis method is used to analyze the degree of all parameters influencing the packing effect, which are ranged from great to petty as followed:gravel concentration, wash-pipe diameter, pump rate, filtration velocity and fluid viscosity.