SPE 151021

Modeling Drilling Fluid Losses in Fractured Reservoirs

J. A. A. Oliveira Jr., J. Z. Souza, C. E. Fontes, ESSS; A. T. A. Waldmann, A. L. Martins, SPE, Petrobras

Copyright 2012, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Latin American and Caribbean Petroleum Engineering Conference held in Mexico City, Mexico, 16–18 April 2012.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of the paper have not been
reviewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers and are subject to correction by the author(s). The material does not necessarily reflect any position of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, its
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Abstract

Fluid losses are still today one of the most challenging problems in well construction. Most strategies to control losses are
empirical and in some situations, detrimental effects can not be avoided. This article deals with unique modeling efforts to
understand the dynamics of bridging fractured zones. The main tools adopted to address the problem were the Computational
Fluid Dynamics, whenever necessary coupled with Discrete Element Method packages. The main goal was to study particle
deposition inside fractures due to losses through the external walls of an axial annular flow. ANSYS FLUENT® and EDEM®
were the adopted simulation tools.
The study includes two different modeling strategies: Discrete Element Simulation and Granular Eulerian CFD approach.
The first method solves the particle trajectory equations individually, considering collision and cohesion effects. Despite of the
reliability of the approach, computation effort is huge and limits the number of particles in the system. The Eulerian approach,
on the other hand treats statistically the particulate system, generating a probabilistic field of occurring one or the other phase
at given space and time. This approach obviously generates smaller computational costs. The developed methodologies allow
the evaluation of the efficacy of bridging agents in plugging fractured zones.

Introduction

During the process of well construction, where a positive pressure differential from the well to the formations happens, fluid
losses may occur. This phenomenon is intensified when fractured zones are present and the effect is even larger if these
fractures are connected to a network of natural fissures. Losses generate additional fluid costs and in extreme situations, may
compromise the drilling performance.
Difficulties in drilling and unsuccessful cementing jobs are frequent events, especially while dealing with fractured
reservoirs (Nelson, (2001)). Motivated by an expressive number of operational events, several companies started investing in
novel technology to control losses (Sweatman et al., (1997), Bruton et al., (2001), Wayne et al., (2003) and Suyan et al.,
(2009)) in fractured zones. The present article focuses on the adaptation of advanced solid - liquid flow modeling to the
dynamics of bridging fractures with particulate material. Different approaches in simulation have been performed to
investigate the liquid-solid flow field behavior; and new approaches, based on Eulerian models and Granular Kinetic Theory,
are being testing and implemented in ANSYS FLUENT® software.
The initial approach considered was the use of Discrete Element Method (DEM) coupled with Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) simulations. The main advantage of this method is the high level of detail obtained about the solid material
behavior, since each particle track is monitored throughout the flow. The main disadvantage of this method is the large
computational effort required. Nevertheless, the data obtained using CFD-DEM approach can be used to generate results to
compare and validate models with other simpler multiphase approach.
The second multiphase model used is the Eulerian-granular approach. This method has been successfully used in the
simulation of gas-solid flows and has been recently extended for use in liquid-solid flows. The advantage of this method is its
reduced computational cost. However, the disadvantage is the dependence on constitutive relationships required to model
additional terms of the solid phase.
Despite of the strategy adopted (experimental or theoretical), several challenges arise to proper represent the problem, such
as: shape of fractures, boundary conditions, mechanisms of fracture propagations. These uncertainties will always limit the
2 SPE 151021

applicability of results and any of these fundamental works may be faced as an additional step on the understanding of the
complex problem of bridging fractures.

CFD-DEM Simulation
The first approach adopted in the development of this project was the application of a coupling between CFD and DEM
techniques. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is a well-known technique for simulation of fluid flow problems
involving various additional physics (heat transfer, chemical reactions, flow in porous media, etc.). The software used,
ANSYS FLUENT®, applies the finite volumes method (Maliska, (2004)) for the solution of conservation of mass and
momentum (Schlichting and Gersten, (2000)). In the case of its coupling with Discrete Element Method (DEM), the form of
the equations represent multiphase flows as two-fluid models (Brennen, (2005)). DEM is a technique used exclusively to
handle cases involving particulate materials. In this method, each particle trajectory is monitored using Lagrangian view along
its way. The interaction with other particles and solid walls is accounted for by considering the shape of the particle and
physical properties of materials, using, for example, a non-linear contact model such as Hertz-Mindlin (Di Renzo and Di Maio,
(2004)). In addition, DEM model is able to account for the effects of field forces (gravity, magnetic force, etc.).
A coupling between CFD and DEM softwares allowed the use of both tools simultaneously. The CFD software is used to
solve the continuous phase (fluid) and DEM software to solve the motion of dispersed phase (particles). The coupling is
responsible for the exchange of information between the phases, especially informing to the CFD software the volume fraction
of the dispersed phase in each cell and transferring, from one side to the other, the information from forces (drag, especially)
and their reactions.
Using this approach, several simulations were carried out in a very extensive study investigating the effect of geometric
characteristics of the particle and the boundary condition imposed. Some of the difficulties encountered in this approach were:
The elevated computational effort of simulations using CFD-DEM coupling; the lack of known boundary conditions and data
for validation; the lack of fluid-particles interaction (drag) models for flows with packing of particles close to its maximum
value. Even with several challenges, the preliminary simulations showed benefits, and the results involving the impact of
pressure differential on the plugging capacity are discussed below.
It is mandatory to impose a pressure differential to study the fluid invasion through a fracture and the ability of a
particulate material to plug it. Due to the dynamics of the process, the definition of these pressure differentials carry several
uncertainties. The methodology adopted to generate the following results was to impose different pressure differentials from
the wellbore to the end of the fracture, in order to evaluate the fluid and particulate flow inside the fracture. These initial
simulations considered rectangular fracture geometry, as shown in Figure 1.
SIMPLIFIED GEOMETRY CLOSER TO THE FRACTURE FRACTURE DIMENSIONS

1 cm

10 cm
0,2 cm
Figure 1 – Fracture geometry.

CFD-DEM modeling setup considers: constant fluid and particle properties, turbulent flow regime (k-ε model), free slip in
internal walls, DEM time step equal to 1 x 10-6s, CFD/DEM time step ratio equal to 1/100, particle rate equal to 30000
particles/s, velocity prescribed at inlet and different pressure boundary values at fissure outlet.
Figure 22 and Figure 33 show particle deposition inside the fracture in two different pressure conditions. In Figure 2, the
pressure difference between well and fissure is 100 Pa. Due the low pressure differential, a few number of particles was able to
go into the fracture. It can be estimated that in such operational condition, the fissure would be filled close to the well.
In Figure 33, the pressure difference between well and fracture is 500 Pa. In such case, the fluid velocity into the fracture is
higher, so that the particles have enough energy to go throughout the fracture. In those conditions, it has been expected that a
lot of fluid would be lost until the fracture complete blockage.
SPE 151021 3

Figure 2 - Particles deposition inside the fracture – Small pressure difference between fracture and well

Figure 3 - Particles deposition inside the fracture – Large pressure difference between fracture and well

The influence of the particle deposition in the fluid flow inside the fracture is presented in Fig.4. The fluid flow reduction into
the fracture along the time indicates that the particles are filling out the rectangular channel, reducing the fluid losses
throughout the fracture.

Figure 4 – Transient flow profile into the fissure

In those simulations, it is possible define interesting quantitative information, such as:

• the pressure difference where particles start to enter into the fracture;
• the total drilling fluid lost over the operation;
• the time necessary to fill out the fracture.

The preliminary simulations showed consistent results, with detailed flow profile inside the fracture. Nevertheless, a lot of
considerations must still be done in order to model the problem in a more realistic way. Of course, increasing the modeling
complexity immediately increases the computational challenges.
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Figure shows an example of one of the more complex simulation performed. In this simulation, the fracture geometry is
considered as a tortuous path, trying to mimic real fracture geometries. The results indicate that particles tend preferentially to
deposit at the fracture changes of direction what would speed a plugging process.

Figure 5 – Example of simulation performed using CFD-DEM approach in the fracture case.

The major difficulty in running such cases is the huge computational effort required, especially due to mesh refinement to
reproduce the complex geometry. Given the huge extension of the geometry and the small size of the particles, it becomes
impractical to reproduce the full 3D simulation process for daily design purposes. Studies in small areas or on a laboratory
scale are possible. This will assist in future developments of the project.
It is important to mention that future simulation should also consider other important phenomena that influence in the
process. For example, fracture has porous walls. The simulation of such case would be much more complex, due the lack of
information about the fracture frontier. This situation is much more realistic, as the fluid would escape from the fracture by all
its porous walls.
The computational difficulties in the CFD-DEM simulation stimulated the team to invest in different implementations of
mathematical modeling of the granular flow in regime, in a way that a practical tool for fluid design would be available. The
focus changed to CFD simulation with granular kinetic theory, as discussed in the following topic.

CFD Simulation with Granular Kinetic Theory

As the cost of a complete CFD + DEM coupled simulation is prohibitive to deal with the cases of interest, the development of
the simulation methodology was directed towards the use of CFD simulations using multiphase Eulerian approach (also known
as multi-fluid approach). This method uses balance equations for mass and momentum (and for other additional quantities,
such as energy, when necessary) for each phase considered as an interpenetrating medium in an Eulerian frame. Exchange
terms accounts for quantities transfer among the phases. In the present work just the mass and momentum balance equations
were solved for each phase.
The same mass balance equation over an infinitesimal control volume (Crowe et al., (1997)) is valid for both phases (fluid
and solid) and is show in Equation 1, the indexes q and p stand for the phase indexes, with q represent the phase being
balanced.

The momentum balance equations for each phase are similar but present differences on the internal stresses modeling. For
the fluid phase the momentum balance equation is given by Equation 2. In this equation, f stands for the fluid phase index and
p for any additional phase.
SPE 151021 5

The internal stresses are represented by the fluid viscosity and the fluid flow shear rate. In this Eulerian granular approach,
the solids phase is treated as a pseudo-fluid which transport equations include terms to deal with additional stresses due to the
internal particle interaction. The solid phase momentum balance equation is given by Equation 3, details about the derivation
of this equation is available in the literature (Gidaspow, (1994)).

This equation is very similar to the momentum balance equation for a fluid phase. The differences are the presence of a
solids pressure gradient term (∇ps) and a different definition of internal stresses including solid shear and bulk viscosities
(∇· ), the definition of these stresses are given in Equation 4. The additional forces term is used to account for other fluid-
particle interactions other than drag. These so-called “non-drag” forces, such as virtual mass, lift as turbulent dispersion, are
sometimes more important than the drag itself.

The solids pressure term accounts for the resistance of the solid to packing, tending to infinite as the solid phase
approaches the maximum packing limit. The solid viscosities represent the losses due to friction (of shear and volumetric
compression/expansion). The local value of the solids pressure and of each solid viscosities is dependent on the local volume
fraction and of a local granular temperature. The definition of this granular temperature is the basis of the Granular Kinetics
Theory (Gidaspow, (1994)). This theory uses a similarity between the suspended granular movement with the molecular
thermal movement. This granular temperature represents the fluctuating velocity of the particles (around the average value
solved by these equations).
A number of different correlations is available to calculate the solids pressure, solid viscosities, radial distribution function
and other properties needed for each term. The choice of which correlations should be used in a given case is still dependent of
the phenomena contemplated and the ranges of physical properties of both phases and operating conditions.

Fluid-Solid flow regimes

One important point is the correct modeling of the solid phase flow patterns. In a simplistic point of view, three different flow
patterns in fluid-solid flow (Peker and Helvaci et al., (2007)) can be defined. Figure 6 shows these three regimes.
suspended particles suspended particles
a) b) c)

suspended particles moving particle bed moving particle bed +

fixed particle bed
Figure 6 - Fluid-solid (particulate) flow patterns: a) Suspended particles on a flowing fluid; b) Suspended particles and a moving bed
of particles at the bottom of the pipe and; c) Suspended particles, a moving particle bed and a fixed bed of particles at the bottom of
the pipe.

In the suspended regime, the particles can interact (according to the concentration) only via collisions. The time of these
collisions, when compared with the travel time between collisions, is quite small. This fact simplifies the development of
models to deal with solid stresses. This regime is also called the collisional regime.
As the average flow velocity decreases, a moving bed of particles is formed at the bottom of the pipe. These particles are in
constant interaction by friction. The hypothesis of instantaneous collisions is no longer valid. Just a few models are available
to deal with this regime. The regime of particle interaction inside the moving bed is called the frictional regime.
6 SPE 151021

With a further decrease in the average flow velocity additional particles accumulate at the bottom of the pipe and a lower
layer of fixed particles is formed. So, as defined in many references in the area (Peker and Helvaci et al., (2007)), a three-layer
flow occurs. The particles in the fixed bed behave like a porous media with elastic structural properties, the interaction regime
of particles at this fixed bed is called elastic regime.
All the initial development on the Granular Kinetic Theory was focused on the modeling of suspended flows, such as the
gas-solid flows inside fluidized beds. As a consequence, the correlations for the different solid stress terms were developed
and validated (according to the case) to deal only with this particular regime. As the usage of this approach increased, a strong
interest on modeling the other regimes appeared and at the moment different groups are investing on the development of such
models. Using ANSYS FLUENT®, models are available to deal with the suspended and frictional regimes.
The correct capture of the different regime is important when dealing with dense fluid-particulate flow with deposition, as
is the case of the formation fissures blocking by injection of particulate material. The correct representation of these
phenomena will be essential for evaluation of fissure blockage due to particle-fluid-walls interaction.

Modeling approaches comparison test case

A simple test case was developed to compare the results of the CFD + DEM coupling with two simulations using the Eulerian
approach, one with models just for the collisional regime and other with models for both the collisional and frictional regimes.
This simple case could be executed using a two-dimensional approach when solved with the CFD Eulerian method. The
solution with the CFD + DEM coupling was performed using a small slice of the channel in the third dimension (just a few
particle diameters deep).

Test case setup

Figure shows the geometry used in this modeling comparison test case. This geometry uses dimensions consistent with the
annular space between the drilling column and the wellbore in a horizontal well. The case was planned, for the sake of
simplicity, using data from gravel packing operations were particles are expected to settle forming the three layers (the
suspended upper layer, the moving bed and the lower fixed bed of particles). Although not similar to the fracture case, this
simple example stands as good platform to compare the different methodologies.

Figure 7– Geometry of the test case used for modeling approaches comparison.

Figure shows the general description of boundary conditions used in this test case. The detail of the particles release plane
is necessary when setting up the CFD + DEM simulation. For the CFD granular setup the particles are injected with the fluid
stream at the velocity inlet.

Figure 8 – general description of boundary conditions for the test case.

The operating conditions and material properties applied are presented in Table 1. These values were used to force the
presence of the three-layer flow inside the channel.

Table 1 – Physical properties and operating condition used for the test case.

Data Value Units

-3
Particle diameter 2,1·10 m
+
Particle density 2,65·10 ³ kg/m³
-1
Particle injection velocity 4,7·10 m/s
+3
Fluid density 1,114·10 kg/m³
-3
Fluid viscosity 1,0·10 Pa·s
-1
Fluid injection velocity 4,23·10 m/s
SPE 151021 7

Simulation results
All the simulations were performed for a time around 20s (physical time). The clock time spent on each simulation was
drastically different. Both simulations using the CFD granular approach took one day using a workstation. The simulation
using CFD + DEM coupling took three weeks on the same equipment. This huge difference is due to the constantly increasing
time spent by the DEM solver to run, increasing as the number of particles increase with time, and also due to the small time
step that had to be used on the coupled simulation. Time steps used in DEM simulations are always very small, in order to
precisely capture particle-particle interaction. To keep consistency between the simulations, the coupled CFD solver is also
forced to use smaller time steps than a standard CFD solution for the same phenomena.
Figure shows the comparison of the solid phase volume fraction field for all the solutions. Some important conclusions
can be derived from its analysis. The first one comes from a comparison between the two CFD granular solutions. It is very
clear that the lack of models to deal with the frictional (and also with the elastic) regimes of particle interaction has a strong
influence on the result quality.
Despite of the fact that both simulations presented volume fractions limited to the values defined at the simulation setup,
showing that the solids pressure models were consistently used, the simulation performed without the frictional regime
modeling showed an abnormal flow of the particulate material, resembling a more fluid behavior than actually expected. The
simulation using the models available to deal with the frictional regime has shown much better agreement with the expected
behavior.
When comparing the simulation using the Eulerian granular with frictional regime modeling with the CFD + DEM
coupling simulation it is possible to observe that both present a clear limiting particle bed height with a reasonable agreement
between their height values.
The main difference between these results is the angle of the particle bed at the end of the deposition zone. Here it is
interesting also to compare the solid phase velocity profiles for a better understanding of this characteristic. Figure compares
the axial velocity profiles for the solid phase among all the results. It is clear that the result using the CFD approach without
frictional regime model is far from agreement with the other results.
It is also clear that none of the simulations was able to capture the fixed bed formation, including the CFD + DEM
coupling. It could be expected that the CFD + DEM simulation would be able to capture this regime since this approach is
supposed to be the most precise for particle-particle interaction. One can attribute the failure on capturing this fixed bed to the
fact, already mentioned, that the models available at the coupling for drag forces are very simplistic, lacking special treatment
for the dense packing case.
The simulation using the CFD granular approach with modeling for the frictional regime agreed very well with the CFD +
DEM simulation. In both cases, it was expected not to capture the fixed bed since no model was applied to deal with elastic
particle interaction. This shows that if well-adjusted and validated the CFD approach using correct granular models can be
used to model this kind of phenomena with satisfactory results.

Figure 9 – Comparison of solid phase volume fraction fields for the solutions of the test case using the different approaches.
8 SPE 151021

Figure 10 – Solid phase axial velocity profiles measured at 0.5m from the inlet.

Final Remarks

The simulation of fluid-solid flows is still an area of academic research but, as the results of the modeling comparison case
have shown that, with some experimental validation and some additional model implementation, it can be successfully applied
to deal with cases of interest of the oil and gas industry.
The simulation approach using the CFD + DEM coupling still lacks the implementation of better fluid-particle interaction
models to be able to fully represent the phenomena. With this models implemented this approach can be used for extraction of
properties needed for the CFD granular approach. The complete simulation of the process using only the CFD + DEM
coupling is not convenient at the moment due to its computational cost.
The simulation with an Eulerian granular approach is the most promising strategy. Its computational cost is very
reasonable and it is much simpler to implement new models on this methodology than on the CFD + DEM coupling. It is
expected that an excellent agreement with experimental data can be reached and the methodology will be able to deal with an
large range of applications.
For both cases, experimental data will be needed to calibrate and validate models implemented. For this purpose the
development and construction of the fracture flow test rig is very important. It will provide the engineers with detailed
experimental results under controlled conditions, adequate to reproduction using the simulation methods.

References

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Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
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Di Renzo, A. and Di Maio, F.P. “Comparison of contact-force models for the simulation of collisions in DEM-based granular flow codes”,
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Schlichting, H., and Gersten, K. “Boundary-Layer Theory”, Springer, 8th Edition, 2000.
SPE 151021 9

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