1) "An Interactive Drilling Simulator
for Teaching and Research" ( 1.3 MB pdf file)
G A Cooper, A G Cooper and G Bihn
SPE Paper 30213, presented at the 10th Petroleum Computer Conference, Houston, TX 11 - 14 June 1995.
This paper describes the Payzone C Drilling Simulator
2) "Integrated Petroleum Engineering
Simulation and Decision Making Teaching
Program" ( 871 KB pdf file )
G A Cooper, J F Mota and A G Cooper
SPE Paper 36660, presented at the SPE 71st Annual Technical Conference and
Exhibition, Denver, 6 Oct 1996.
This paper describes the use of the simulator in developing an integrated "Capstone Petroleum Engineering Course" that brings together all of the different subjects that a typical university undergraduate studies in a program on Petroleum Engineering. The course follows the process of discovery and evaluation of an oilfield. Fifteen topics cover the history of the process, starting with the seismic survey, and continue via the planning and drilling of the wildcat, and the design of drill pipe strings, casing, cementing, and logging operations. This is followed by the interpretation of well tests, the evaluation of PVT properties, the estimation of the size of the reservoir, and the volumes of oil and gas in place. Finally the students carry out an economic analysis to establish whether the field can be exploited economically. The Payzone simulator is used in many but not all of the exercises. See also "The Railroad Gap Field Project" in the section that describes the Exercises.
3) "Novel Training Simulator Integrates
Disciplines" ( 2.1 MB pdf file)
G A Cooper, J F Mota and A G Cooper
Petroleum Engineer International, 70, 1, 89 - 95 Jan 1997
This paper has a more popular desciption of the Payzone C simulator and its use in the "Capstone Petroleum Engineering Course".
4) "The use of a Drilling Simulator to Optimize
a Well Drilling Plan" ( 485 KB pdf file)
A A Abouzeid and G A Cooper
Presented at the Geothermal Resources Council 2001 Annual
meeting,
26 - 29 August 2001, San Diego, California.
Overall, the paper shows how the simulator may be used to help in the
planning of future wells if information is available from offset wells.
Method :
LAS files from an offset well were imported and used to build a lithology.
The simulator was adjusted to reproduce the drilling performance observed
in the offset well.
The well was re-drilled to see if a better
set of operating conditions could be specified.
It was found that the offset well had been drilled with optimum hydraulics,
but in a future well better results might be obtained by increasing rotary
speed while reducing weight on bit.
It might also be advantageous to use a milled tooth or PDC bit in place of the
tungsten carbide insert bits that had been used in the offset well.
See also the section on the use of Payzone in well planning
5) "A proposal for the real-time
measurement of tooth wear" ( 234 KB pdf file)
G A Cooper
Presented at the Geothermal Resources Council 2002 Annual
meeting,
22 - 25 September 2002, Reno, Nevada.
The paper suggests how the drilling mechanics algorithms in a drilling simulator may be used in real time to determine bit tooth wear.
Now that MWD measurements are available to determine rock properties at or near the bit, it becomes possible to use two methods to infer the strength of the rock being penetrated. The first is by geophysical methods, typically involving some combination of the sonic, natural gamma ray and possibly other measurements. The second is by inverting the drilling mechanics calculations that are at the heart of a typical drilling simulator so that, instead of determining rate of penetration from a known rock strength, one infers the rock strength from the rop.
However, the estimate of rock strengh derived from the driling response is affected by the state of wear of the bit teeth. If no allowance is made for tooth wear, then the estimate of rock strength will gradually rise as the teeth wear (since the rop drops under constant operating conditions). By comparing the log-derived and rop-derived estimates of rock strength it then becomes possible to deduce the state of wear of the bit teeth from the difference between the two estimates.
The proposal is tested against synthetic (but not field) drilling data and shown to give good results.
See also the section on the use of Payzone for real-time optimization
6) "Experimental Verification of a Drilling
Simulator" ( 77 KB pdf file)
A A Abouzeid and G A Cooper
Presented at the Eighth International Conference on Mining, Metallurgical
and Petroleum Engineering
17 - 19 March 2003, Suez Canal University, Egypt.
The paper describes work done to check the predictions of the Payzone drilling model against the results of several experiments that were carried out in Drilling Test Machines located in other laboratories.
The predictions of the Payzone model were compared with the experimental results and also against the predictions of the well-known Warren-Winters-Onyia model.
It was possible to make the Payzone model fit the results obtained in different laboratories, but the tuning adjustments required were not always the same. This raises the question of whether the experiments were actually carried out under corresponding conditions in the different laboratories. It was not possible to resolve this issue at the time of writing.
7) "Prediction of rock mechanical
properties from Wireline Data and their use in Drilling Simulation"
( 122 KB pdf file)
G A Cooper and P Hatherly
Presented at the SPE Western Region / AAPG joint meeting
19 - 24 May 2003, Long Beach California.
This paper describes a method for deriving rock type, strength and abrasivity from wireline data and their use in constructing a rock sequence that can be drilled by Payzone.
Simulator predictions are tuned to match bit records from the field, so that for each bit run, the time to drill the interval and the wear state of the bit at the end of the run correspond. If tuned in this way, the simulator may then be used to experiment with alternative drilling strategies and so optimize a future offset well.
8) "An automated, low mass, low
power drill for acquiring subsurface samples of ground ice for
astrobiology studies on Earth and on Mars"
( 206 KB pdf file)
G A Briggs, H Cannon, S Domville, B Glass, C McKay, J George,
B Derkowski, R Fincher, G A Cooper, K Zacny, W Pollard and
S Clifford
Presented at the Third International Conference on Mars Polar
Science and Exploration, Banff, Canada, October 2003.
This paper describes the contributions of several laboratories to NASA's overall mission of being able to drill boreholes on Mars for scientific exploration.
The Payzone simulator is being adapted to generate synthetic drilling scenarios that will allow various control algorithms to be developed and checked in parallel with the engineering development of the actual drilling hardware that will be used in the Arctic or on Mars.
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Last update 21 October 2003