Drillpipe Buckling in Inclined Holes

Rapier Dawson, SPE, Exxon

P.R. Paslay, consultant

Production Research CO.

Summary
In high-angle wells the force of gravity pulls the drillstring against the low side of the hole. This stabilizes the
string and allows drillpipe to carry axial compressive
loads without buckling. For this reason it is practical to
run drillpipe in compression in high-angle drilling where
the drillcollar weights, which are needed to avoid compression, would cause excessive torque and drag.
Introduction
In drilling vertical wells it is common industry practice
to avoid loading drill pipe so that it would be unstable
from a simple column-buckling point of view. Drillpipe
is kept stable by making sure that the buoyed weight of
the drill collars and heavyweight pipe exceeds the weight
on bit (WOB). This practice was recommended by
Lubinski in 1950. 1
In drilling directional wells it is common practice to
use about the same bottomhole assembly (BRA) weight
that would be used for a vertical well. Most operators do
not add collars as hole angle increases even though they
may have several thousand feet of drillpipe in compression in high-angle holes. This practice seems to work
fairly well; the high incidence of drillstring failure that
would be expected if compression really were harmful
does not occur. This paper is intended to justify and support this practice by showing that drillpipe can tolerate
significant levels of compression in small-diameter highangle holes because of the support provided by the low
side of the hole.
The benefit of using drillpipe in compression is that
the BRA weight can be kept low in high-angle drilling.
This, in tum, helps reduce torque and drag, which are
often operational constraints in very deep directional
drilling.
Earlier Work
The fact that a high hole angle can stabilize drillpipe
against buckling seems to have been recognized first by
Lubinski and Woods in 1953. 2 They stated that for
given values of drill collar weight and compressive load,
"there is a value of Ir below which helical buckling
may occur and above which it cannot occur." Lubinski
and Woods mentioned that they had done some experimental studies to quantify this phenomenon and that
the results of these tests had been used in preparing some
of the figures in their paper. Unfortunately these brief
comments were not noticed widely by the drilling
industry.
After Lubinski and Woods' work, the contribution of
hole angle to drillpipe stability was ignored in the drill01492136/84/01011167 $00.25
Copyright 1984 Society of Petroleum Engineers of AIME

1734

ing literature for 30 years. In 1983, Dellinger published a

crossplot and extrapolation of Lubinski and Woods'
results. 3 Dellinger's presentation is helpful but not really clear enough for routine use by drilling engineers. In
addition, neither Dellinger nor Lubinski and Woods
presented any theoretical analysis of the stability of
drillpipe in inclined wellbores.
Stability Analysis
The purpose of stability analysis is to find the boundary
between regions of stable and unstable behaviors. For
drill pipe in compression, stability analysis can give the
maximum compressive load that can be carried without
buckling the pipe.
Paslay and Bogy have analyzed the stability of a circular rod lying on the low side of an inclined circular
hole. 4 As is shown in the Appendix, their result may be
simplified to yield the following expression for the
critical compressive load:
ElpAg sin ()) liz

Fcrit =2 (

................. (1)

This equation should be used to predict the onset of

buckling in an inclined hole. It replaces the simple Euler
column-buckling equation:

FCrit=EI( ; )

2 .........................

(2)

The Paslay-Bogy analysis predicts a much higher

buckling load than would be calculated from the Euler
analysis. Consider, for example, 1,000 ft [305 m] of
5-in. [13-cm], 19.5-lbm/ft [29-kg/m] drillpipe in an
8.5-in. [22-cm] hole at a 45 angle. Eq. 1 gives a critical
load of 35,000 Ibm [15 876 kg] in this case while Eq. 2
gives a critical load of only 29 Ibm [13 kg]. This illustrates the profound difference between the two types
of buckling analysis.
The reason that pipe in an inclined hole is so resistant
to buckling is that the hole is supporting and constraining
the pipe throughout its length. The low side of the hole
forms a trough that resists even a slight displacement of
the pipe from its initial straight configuration. The effect
of gravity and the curving sides of the hole form an
elastic restraint similar to the elastic foundation studied
by Timoshenko. 5
Note that Eq. 1 does not always predict high buckling
loads. If either the hole angle or the pipe weight is small,
the critical load also will be small. Likewise, very large
values of radial clearance will give low critical buckling
loads. Also note that Eq. 1 is written for long pipe
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY

TABLE 1-DRILLPIPE DATA"

Size
(in.)

Nominal
Weight
(lbm/tI)

Material

5
5
4112
4
3112
5
4112

25.6
19.5
16.6
14.0
13.3
10.0
8.4

steel
steel
steel
steel
steel
aluminum
aluminum

Notes:

Body

Body

00
ID
~ ~
5.00
5.00
4.50
4.00
3.50
5.15
4.60

E/t

Moment
of Inertia""
(in.4)

(psi-in. 4
x 10 6 )

(Ibmlfl)

18.11
14.27
9.61
6.46
4.50
20.66
13.73

543
429
288
194
135
219
146

21.4
16.4
13.9
12.2
10.7
6.2
4.9

4.00
4.28
3.83
3.34
2.76
4.10
3.60

pAgt

' Based on new-pipe dimensions.

" 1=0.04909 (0 4 _d 4 ).

tE(steel)=30x10 6 psi; E(aluminum)=10.6x10 6 psi [73x10 B kPal.

:t: These are the buoyed weight-per-foot values used to prepare Figs. 1 through 8.

lengths and is therefore independent of pipe length as

shown in the Appendix. For short lengths of pipe (e.g.,
100 ft [30 mD the actual buckling load would be even
higher than given by Eq. 1.
The development of Eq. 1 by Paslay and Bogy does
not mention the effects of buoyancy. Nonetheless, Eq. 1
applies rigorously to buoyed pipe provided the following
steps are taken.
1. The term pAg must be the buoyed weight per length
of the pipe.
2. The compressive load, F, or Fcrit must be the load
existing above and beyond any isotropic compression
caused by hydrostatic pressure.
The second condition corresponds to using the
distributed buoyancy (or buoyancy factor) method to
calculate the loads in the pipe. This method is totally accurate for pipe stability analysis and is significantly
simpler than the pressure-area method.
The critical buckling load from Eq. 1 may be used
directly for BRA design. The design requirement for
drillpipe stability is
Fcrit > Wb - WBHA cos () ..................... (3)

This equation indicates that either the WOB, W b, must

be low enough, or the buoyed BRA weight, WBHA , must
be high enough, so that their difference is less than F erit.
Eq. 3 is the equation that usually is used for BRA design
except that the traditional value for F crit is zero.

Comparison With Earlier Work

Eq. 1 can be shown to be similar to the equation for
critical-buckling load recently presented by Dellinger et
al. 3 If Dellinger's equation is rewritten with SPE symbols, the result is
sin ())

0.436

Fcrit=2.93 (El) 0.479 (pAg)0.522 ( -r.................................... (4)

In the range of fairly high stability (i.e., high hole angle

and/or low radial clearance), this equation gives results
close to Eq. 1. In the lower range of stabilities, Eq. 4
gives critical load values up to 50 % higher than Eq. 1.
This discrepancy may represent a weakness in the
underlying data that were observed originally by Woods
and Lubinski and later used by Dellinger to derive Eq. 4.
In their experimental tests, Woods and Lubinski obOCTOBER 1984

18

16
BUCKLING OCCURS!N THIS REGION

NO BUCKLING OCCURS IN THIS REGION

10

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

HOLE ANGLE !DEGREES I

Fig. 1-Stability analysis results for 5-in. [13-cm], 19.5-lbm/tl

[29-kg/m] drill pipe carrying a 20,000 Ibf [89 764 N]
axial compressive load.

served the minimum loads that were obviously unstable.

Since slightly unstable loads produce only small deflections in this type of buckling problem, Woods and
Lubinski probably were led to overestimate the value of
the critical buckling load. *
Woods and Lubinski themselves fit an equation to
their experimental data collected in 1953. This equation
was never published, but in SPE nomenclature it is*
sin ())

Fcrit =2.85 (EI )0.504 (pAg)0.496 ( _r-

0.511

.................................... (5)

Presumably the differences between Eq. 4 and 5 reflect

the fact that Woods and Lubinski used the data directly,
whereas Dellinger et al. attempted to reconstruct the data
from Fig. 2 of Ref. 2.

Graphical Presentation
Eq. 1 lends itself to simple graphical presentation provided a separate graph is made for each size of drillpipe.
Several of these graphs are included in this paper; their
preparation and use is discussed briefly here.
'Lubinski,

A.:

personal communication, Smith Inti. Inc., Tulsa.

1735

Consider, for the moment, that we wish to analyze the

stability of 5-in. [13-cm), I9.5-lbm/ft [29-kg/m) steel
drillpipe in I5.5-lbm/gal [I546-g/m 3 ) mud. Table 14
shows that this pipe has an EI value of 4.29 x 10 8 psi-in.
[0.75 x 10 8 kPam). In I5.5-lbm/gal [I546-g/m 3 ) mud
this pipe has pAg value of about 16.32 lbm/ft [24.28
kg/m]. If these two values are substituted into Eq. 1 the
result is

. = (23.4XI0 8 SinX)

F ent

HOLE ANGLE (DEGREES)

Fig.2-Critical buckling loads for 5-in. [13-cm], 19.5-lbm/ft

[29-kg/mj drillpipe.

60
HOLE ANGLE

70

80

90

IDEGREES~

Fig. 3-Critical buckling loads for 5-in. [13-cmj, 25.6-lbmlft

[38-kg/mj drillpipe.

'/2

.............. (6)

If some particular value of critical load is chosen then

this equation can be solved for radial clearance as a function of hole angle. Fig. 1 was prepared in this fashion for
a critical load of 20,000 Ibm [9077 kg]. In Fig. 1 the
graph of Eq. 6 divides the hole-angle/hole-diameter
plane into two regions; the lower region is stable and the
upper region is unstable. Fig. 1 makes it easy to evaluate
the stability for 5-in. [13-cm], I9.5-lbm/ft [29-kg/m)
drillpipe that has a 20,000-lbm [9077-kg) compressive
load; if the hole size and inclination specify a point
below the curve then the pipe is stable.
The chief limitation to Fig. 1 is that it applies only to
one particular load value. This defect is removed by plotting curves for several loads on the same graph; Fig. 2 is
an example of this. By interpolating between the curves
in Fig. 2 it is possible to estimate the critical buckling
load for 5-in. [13-cm) pipe at any combination of hole
size and inclination. For example, a I2IA-in. [31-cm)
hole at 60 angle yields critical buckling load of roughly
25,000 Ibm [11 340 kg]. If the actual compressive load
is lower than that value the pipe will be stable.
Fig. 2 contains several minor numerical approximations that were necessary to prepare a single figure for all
5-in. [13-cm], I9.5-1bm/ft [29-kg/m) drillpipe. These
approximations primarily involve selection of a buoyed
weight-per-foot value for the pipe in question. In practice, three factors can influence the buoyed weight of
5-in. [13-cm), I9.5-1bm/ft [29-kg/m) drillpipe: (1) mud
density, (2) tool joint dimensions, and (3) wear of the
pipe and tool joints.
If all these variables were included it would be
necessary to start over with Eq. 1 every time a new situation was encountered. Since such precision is usually unnecessary, we have selected a single value of buoyed
weight per foot to use for each size of drillpipe. For 5-in.
[13-cm], I9.5-1bm/ft [29-kg/m] pipe, this value is 16.3
Ibm/ft [24.25 kg/m], which corresponds to Grade X pipe
in I5.5-1bm/gal [1546-g/m 3 ) mud. In a similar fashion,
typical buoyed weight-per-foot values were chosen for
other sizes of drillpipe. These arbitrarily chosen values
were used to prepare our figures.
Figs. 3 through 8 show critical buckling loads for
other common sizes of drillpipe besides 5 in. [13 cm],
I9.5lbmlft [29 kg/m]. The values of buoyed weight per
foot that were used to prepare these figures are shown in
Table 1.

30,000 Ibf

60

70

80

HOLE ANGLE (DEGREES)

Fig. 4-Critical buckling loads for 4.5-in. [11-cmj, 16.6-lbm/ft

[25-kg/mj drillpipe.
1736

90

Discussion of Approximations
A number of idealizations and approximations were
made in the analysis scheme presented in the preceding
section.
JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY

20

20

18

18

16

16

14

14

12

12

~
0

,0'

",\

,0,00'
10

80

90

6~0-L~'-~~--~--~--~50o---~60'--'7~0--~80'-~90

HOLE ANGLE IDEGREESI

HOLE ANGLE !DEGREES)

Fig. 5-Critical buckling loads for 4-in. [10-cm), 14.0-lbm/ft

[21-kg/m) drillpipe.

Fig. 6-Critical buckling loads for 3.5-in. [9-cm), 13.3-lbm/ft

[20-kg/m) drillpipe.

Favorable Approximations. The following approximations tend to make the analysis err on the side of safety
and reduce the chances of unexpected pipe buckling.
1. The radial clearance used is based on the pipe-body
diameter. Presence of tool joints will reduce this
clearance and increase the critical buckling loads.
2. The mud weight used in the analysis is 15.5 Ibm/gal
[1546 g/m3]. If the actual mud weight is lower than that,
the higher buoyed weight of the pipe will increase the
critical buckling load.

given here. Torque can be included in the stability

analysis, but its effect is small for realistic values.
4. The analysis requires an estimate of hole enlargement. If the actual hole is larger than expected, bending
stresses will also be larger than planned.
5. Mud weights greater than 15.5 Ibm/gal [1546
g/m3] will lower the critical buckling load slightly.

Unfavorable Approximations. The following approximations may allow the pipe to buckle even though it appears stable.
1. The wellbore is assumed to be straight. A compressive load in an angle drop-off region will reduce the
effective weight of the pipe there and, thereafter, lower
the critical buckling load proportionally.
2. API Class I (new) drillpipe dimensions have been
used in the analysis. Worn pipe will be less stiff, less
heavy, and buckle more easily.
3. The effects of torque are neglected in the equations

Conclusions
Drillpipe in high-angle holes can carry compressive axial
loads without buckling. At hole angles above 50, use of
drill pipe in compression will permit a major reduction in
BHA weight and a significant reduction in torque and
drag on the drillstring.
The purpose of this paper is not to revolutionize
drill string design but to provide an engineering basis for
analyzing current practice and making improvements in
the future.
Nomenclature
A = cross-sectional area of pipe, sq. in. [cm 2 ]
E = Young's modulus, psi [kPa]
20,---,----r------.----,---..-,--,-----,----,------,
5000 Ibf

18

16

14

1;00 Ibf

12

10

30.000 Ibf
70

80

HOLE ANGLE (DEGREES I

Fig. 7-Critical buckling loads for 5-in. [13-cm) aluminum

drillpipe.
OCTOBER 1984

80

90

90

HOLE ANGLE (DEGREESI

Fig. 8-Critical buckling loads for 4.S-in. [11-cm) aluminum

drillpipe.
1737

F = axial compressive load, lbf [N]

= critical axial load to initiate buckling, lbf
[N]
g = gravitational force, lbf [N]
f = moment of inertia, in.4
L = length of column, in. [cm]
n = order of buckling
r = radial clearance between pipe and hole, in.
[cm]
Wb = weight on bit, lbf [N]
W BHA = buoyed weight of BHA, Ibm [kg]
(J = hole angle, measured from vertical
I' = Poisson's ratio
p = weight per cubic inch, Ibm [kg]
Ferit

Acknowledgments
We thank Exxon Production Research Co. for permission to publish this paper. We also thank Arthur Lubinski for providing unpublished results and Trudy Atkins
for typing the manuscript.
References

APPENDIX
Derivation of Eq. 1
The derivation of Eq. 1 in this paper begins with Eq. 33
in Ref. 4, which is

(1-1')2
(1 +1')(1-21')

11"2 (
L4pAg )
Ef-- n 2 of .

L2

n 211"4EIr

................... , ............... (A-I)

This equation applies to a rod or pipe in a horizontal hole
only. To generalize this equation to inclined holes,
multiply the weight-per-Iength factor, pAg, by sin (J.
Also assume that Poisson's ratio, 1', is approximately 1/ 3 ,
in which case the leading coefficient in Eq. A-I becomes
1.0. These changes give
4
_
11"2 (2 L pAg sin (J)
Ferit -Ef-n
+
2 4
. . . . . . . (A-2)
L2
n 11" Efr
This equation simplifies to Eq. 2 (Euler buckling)
when hole angle or pipe weight is zero or when radial
clearance is infinite. In those cases the critical buckling
load is determined by first-order buckling (n=I). Eq.
A-2 does not predict the critical buckling length of 1.94
dimensionless units given by Lubinski. 1 This is because
Lubinski considers the buckling of a critical column
under its own weight, whereas Eq. A-2 is derived for
pipe buckling under a constant, externally applied load.
1738

a
an

-Ferit

=0, ............................ (A-3)

which is
....... (A-4)
or

1. Lubinski, A.: "A Study of the Buckling Rotary Drilling Strings,"

Drill. and Prod. Prac., API, Dallas (1950) 178.
2. Lubinski, A., and Woods, H.B.: Drill. and Prod. Prac., API,
Dallas (1953) 222.
3. Dellinger, T.B., Gravley, W., and Walraven, J.E.: "Preventing
Buckling in Drill Strength," U.S. Patent No. 4,384,483 (1983).
4. Paslay, P.R. and Bogy, D.B.: "The Stability of a Circular Rod
Laterally Constrained to be in Contact with an Inclined Circular
Cylinder," J. Appl. Mech. (1964) 31,605-10.
5. Timoshenko, S.: Theory of Elastic Stability, McGraw-Hill Book
Co. Inc., New York City (1936) 108.

Ferit

Eq. A-2 results from an eigenvalue problem where n is

the number of buckles (or the order of buckling) that occur in a pipe length L. Note that buckling of long lengths
of pipe in inclined holes does not start with the first order
and then proceed to higher orders at increased loads. The
first buckle that appears will have some higher order
(n> 1), depending on the pipe length. The buckle that
first occurs is the one whose n gives the lowest value of
Fcritas calculated by Eq. A-2.
For fairly long rods, the simplest way to proceed is to
ignore the fact that n takes on only integral values and to
treat it as a continuous variable. With that assumption
the minimum value of F erit may be found by setting the
derivative equal to zero.

2n-

2L 4 pAg sin

(J

n 3 11"4Efr

0, ................... (A-5)

which gives
n

2=

4
(L pAg sin

(J)

'h

................. (A-6)

1I"4EIr

If this value of n 2 is substituted back into Eq. A-2 then

considerable simplification results (Eq. 1):

Ferit

-2

(EfPAg sin

(J)

'h

This equation is the same as Eq. 1 given in the text. Ignoring the eigenvalue nature of the problem has
eliminated both nand L from the final formula. A few
sample calculations made with the original Eq. A-I have
shown that the approximate result is quite accurate for
pipe lengths more than about 200 ft [61 m].
Note on Compression. Throughout this paper the
"compressive load" being considered is the load that exists above and beyond any isotropic compression caused
by hydrostatic pressure.

SI Metric Conversion Factors

m. X 2.54*
lbf x 4.448 222
Ibm X 4.535 924
psi X 6.894757
"Conversion factor is exact.

E+OO
E+OO
E-01
E+oo

cm
N
kg
kPa

JPT

Original manuscript received in the SOCiety of Petroleum Engineers office Dec. 8,

1982. Paper accepted for publication May 11, 1984. Revised manuscript received
April 26, 1984. Paper (SPE 11167) first presented at the SPE 1982 Annual Technical
Conference and Exhibition held in New Orleans Sept. 26-29.

JOURNAL OF PETROLEUM TECHNOLOGY