20.
itü petrol ve doğal gaz semineri
bildiriler kitapçığı – 2010
paper presented at the ITU Petroleum and Natural Gas Conference, 24-25
June, 2010, Istanbul
Advances
V. C. Kelessidis in drilling hydraulics and drilling fluid rheology
Mineral Resources Engineering Department, Technical University of Crete, Greece
vassilios.kelessidis@gmail.com
http://drillinglab.mred.tuc.gr
Abstract
A review is presented of recent work from the
Drilling Engineering Laboratory on drilling
hydraulics and drilling fluid rheology. We
present results of the comparison of modeling
flow of Herschel-Bulkley fluids in concentric
and eccentric annulis with data derived in the
laboratory as well as from other research, with
predictions matching measurements in all cases.
Drilling fluid rheology plays significant role in
estimation of pressure losses and assessment is
made of various errors inherent to rheological
measurements, which can be significant and can
affect pressure loss estimation, particularly in
the annulus where pressure margins can be very
small.
Introduction
Drilling hydraulics is an essential part of drilling
package enabling computation of pressure
profiles along the wellbore and particularly in
the annulus contributing to well safety and well
integrity (Bourgoyne et al., 1991; Maglione et
al., 1999; Bailey and Peden, 2000; Zamora and
Roy, 2000) with considerable work to-date
devoted on this subject (Ramadan and Miska,
2008; Ozbayoglu and Sorgun 2010) resulting in
improvements of the API recommended practice
for drilling fluid rheology and drilling
hydraulics estimation (API 2006; Bern et al.,
2007). Accurate determination of pressure
losses in the well circuit requires good
representation of fluid rheology, based on field
or laboratory measurements (Becker et al.,
2003; Zamora et al., 2005). These become
particularly important in today’s difficult
exploration and development environments of
very deep wells, of high pressure and
temperatures, and in situations of very deep or
ultra-deep waters (Kelessidis, 2007). As our
understanding of the flow processes is still far
from ideal, research has continued into the
aspects of drilling hydraulics (Kelessidis et al.,
2006; Founargiotakis et al., 2008; Scheid et al.,
2009; Kok 2010;) and the development of
drilling fluid additives (Kok and Alikaya, 2005;
Tehrani et al., 2009) as well as on the
development of rheological models (Al-Zahrani,
1997; Nasiri and Ashrafizade, 2010) or the
choice of the best model (Kok, 2004; Maglione
and Kelessidis, 2006). This work aims at
critically presenting advances made on these
particular aspects in the past five years pointing
out resolutions to previous problems and
 V. C. Kelessidis
addressing remaining issues and challenges for
future work by research and industry.
Drilling hydraulics
Industry has studied drilling hydraulics ever
since its inception and at first, Newtonian
models have been used. Quickly, though,
industry has search for flow solutions covering
non-Newtonian fluids (Willis et al., 1973;
Zamora and Lord, 1974) with comprehensive
assessment in the gospel of drilling engineering
(Bourgoyne et al., 1991). Research work
continued on the subject and in particular for
flow in annuli, the most critical part for oil-well
drilling. These efforts aimed to describe the
flow situations like velocity profiles, transition
limits for any type of non-Newtonian fluid and
in particular for yield-stress pseudoplastic
fluids, like the lately revived in popularity, the
Herschel-Bulkley model.
Reed and Pilehvari (1993) presented a fairly
complex model covering laminar, transitional
and turbulent flow of Herschel-Bulkley fluids
flowing in concentric annuli. They proposed
modifications to the diameters of the conduits to
account for the non-Newtonian effect. This
approach has been also followed by Merlo et al.
(1995), Maglione et al. (2000) and Bailey and
Peden (2000) to cover all flow regimes for flow
of Herschel-Bulkley fluids and of generalized
non-Newtonian fluids in concentric annuli.
However, a consistent and accurate
methodology for predicting pressure drop for
laminar, transitional and turbulent flow as well
as the transition points from laminar to turbulent
flow for the flow of Herschel-Bulkley fluids in
concentric annuli, without resorting to heavy
numerical computations, did not exist and a
recent publication (Founargiotakis et al., 2008)
covered this gap.
The issue is that when one attempts to predict
frictional losses, one should know when
transition from laminar to turbulent takes place,
and the range of the flow rates that this occurs is
not well established even for two parameter
models both for pipe and annular flow. Most of
the work to-date uses the values taken from the
Dodge and Metzner graph (Dodge and Metzner,
1959), which has been established for power
law fluids and has not been extended to either
flow in annuli nor to yield-pseuodplastic fluids
like the Herschel-Bulkley fluid. Founargiotakis
et al. (2008) have used the local-power law
approach and used in the Dodge and Metzner
equation, the value of local flow behavior index,
n’. Results for concentric annulus flow have
represented experimental data well, both from
their work (Figure 1) as well as from work of
others (Figure 2), while the eccentricity
corrections of M. Haciislamoglu and Laglinais
(1990) for laminar flow and of Haciislamoglou
and Cartalos (1994) for turbulent flow
represented also very well the data for 100%
eccentric annulus (Figure 3).
Drilling fluid rheology
Drilling fluids are complex fluids and their
rheological behavior needs more than one
parameter (viscosity for Newtonian fluids) to
characterize it. Traditionally the two-parameter
Bingham plastic or power law models have been
used with moderate success, primarily because
of the simplicity of the flow equations of these
models. However with the advent of powerful
computing power, industry and research
personnel have opted to use more advanced
models, containing three or even more
parameters, and in particular the Herschel-
Bulkley model (API 13D, 2006; Kelessidis et
al., 2006). The choice of the model will of
course depend on the data available for a given
fluid and given situation. Two-speed Fann
viscometers, while they have provided
significant support to industry, giving though
only two-point measurements thus enabling the
determination of the two parameters, have
become obsolete in recent years and in
particular while drilling critical wells. In these
situations, normally the 6-speed or even the 12-
speed Fann type viscometers are used, mostly in
the laboratory but also in the field and at
different temperatures and pressures. Having
access to more than two measurements enables
 Advances in drilling hydraulics and drilling fluid rheology
one to determine more accurate multi-parameter
rheological models.
Errors in rheological measurements
Oil-filed rheological measurements are prone to
errors, as with any instruments. Researchers
have studied the issue in previous years, but it
has been customary to ignore these errors and
utilize the values taken normally of the six (or
two)-speeds at face value. The most significant
errors in rheological measurements are related
a) to the use of Newtonian shear rates, b) to the
end effects of the viscometer, c) to wall slip and
d) to yield stress determination.
Newtonian shear rates
The solution to the flow equation of the drilling
fluid in the double-cylinder Fann type
viscometer is performed for the oil-field narrow
gap viscometer, by assuming that the shear rates
within the gap are Newtonian. If the fluid is
non-Newtonian, the shear rate on the wall of the
inner fixed cylinder depends on the particular
fluid model and on the rheological parameters to
be determined (Kelessidis et al. 2006, Guillot
1990). Most of the time though, in commercial
applications but also in research, no corrections
are applied and use is made of the Newtonian
shear rate instead of the true shear rate, without
making the proper reference both in user guides
of rotational viscometers but also in research
papers. The fact that the gap between the two
cylinders is small for most standard viscometer
types, with the ratio being re / ri = 1.067846 ,
tends to minimize the error introduced, but the
error is there and the magnitude depends not
only on the rheological model but also on the
actual values of its rheological parameters.
Successful quantification of these errors has
been done recently for Casson and Robertson-
Stiff fluids (Kelessidis and Maglione, 2006) and
in particular for Herschel-Bulkley fluids
(Kelessidis and Maglione, 2008). In Fig. 4, the
results are shown for Newtonian and true shear
rates for Herschel-Bulkley fluids. The analysis
shows that the errors can be significant but can
be quantified. This can have an impact on the
3
pressure loss estimation, and in Figure 5, the
impact of using Newtonian versus true HB-
shear rates for various flow situations in annuli
are presented.
End effects
Solution of the flow situations in the Fann-type
viscometer involve normally implicit
assumptions that the cylinders are infinitely
long, known as the end-effects problem. This
been questioned not only for non-Newtonian
[Guguyener et al., 2002] but for Newtonian
fluids as well [Barnes et al., 1993].
An experimental study has recently been
undertaken (Kelessidis et al., 2010a) to
investigate end-effects occurrence and their
magnitude, for Newtonian and non-Newtonian
fluids, with standard oil-field, direct indicating-
viscometer. Is was shown that such viscometers
have already embedded at manufacturing stage
an end-effects correction, which was quantified
for the first time, of magnitude of 6.69% of the
torque developed. This does not allow end-
effect determination in a straight forward
manner, as it can be done with other
viscometers, and the authors presented a
procedure to resolve this. They further
determined that there is additional end-effects
contribution from the top section of the bob,
shown also experimentally in another related
study and depicted in Figure 6 (Rune et al.,
2009). Its magnitude ranges from 5 to 6 % for
the high shear rate range, to 12% for the low
shear rate range for the non-Newtonian fluid
tested. Non-allowance for the additional end-
effects errors could result in over-prediction of
pressure losses in the annulus of the order of
11% which could jeopardize well safety in
difficult to drill wells, as depicted in Figure 7.
Wall slip
Many times researchers wonder and try to
assess whether slippage of the fluid to be
measured slips, i.e. the fluid particle does not
have the same velocity as the solid wall it
adheres. Significant research has gone into the
subject, for oil-drilling situations (e.g.
Yoshimura and Prud’homme, 1988) and for
 V. C. Kelessidis
suspension flows (Walls et al., 2003). The
occurrence or not of the wall slip has a
significant impact on the determination of the
parameters of the rheological model considered
to describe the fluid behavior leading to sub-
optimal evaluation of operational parameters in
numerous engineering applications. Recent
work (Kelessidis et al., 2010b) has allowed
determination of wall slip occurrence in
concentric cylinder Couette-type narrow-gap
viscometer for bentonite dispersions after long
intensive shearing, and polymer solutions such
as Carbopol solutions. Coincidence of
rheograms has been observed with the two bobs
used both for bentonite and Carbopol
dispersions (Figure 8). It was further concluded
that if preparation procedures are followed as
suggested for Carbopol solutions and by API
standard for drilling fluids, simulating either the
pre-shearing in the rig mud pumps or in the bit
nozzles during drilling operations, wall slip does
not occur, with a good agreement of the
rheograms and of the yield stresses determined
for both gap sizes of the Couette viscometer and
by the vane rheometer.
Yield stress determination
Rheological models are normally determined by
curve-fitting using a non-linear regression
package. Data reduction procedures applicable
to various rheological models have been
proposed by many investigators, addressing also
some of the inherent problems. Fitting is
performed by minimizing the sum of error
squares and judging the goodness of fit through
the value of the correlation coefficient from the
linearized form of equation. However, non-
linear fit to various data in this laboratory with a
numerical package has given occasionally the
best fit (highest correlation coefficient) with
negative values for the yield stress, which is
meaningless. Literature review has revealed
similar reports by many investigators, who then
dismissed the Herschel-Bulkley model on these
grounds, despite the fact that the rheograms
were typical of a Herschel-Bulkley fluid. In
these situations, the condition τ y > 0 could be
imposed to get meaningful results but this
would affect the optimum determination of all
three parameters. Work has been reported
(Kelessidis et al., 2006) with a different and
optimal methodology, using a golden section
search, which determines the three Herschel-
Bulkley rheological parameters of drilling fluids
from concentric cylinder viscometric data,
avoiding the observed pitfalls particularly in the
cases when negative yield stress values were
predicted (Figure 9). The recommended
approach leads to unique solutions and can be
easily implemented.
Best rheological model
Industry personnel are very often asked to
choose the best rheological model for a given
set of rheological data. The choice is of extreme
importance for computing pressure losses and
velocity profiles, with the former contributing to
oil-well safety (Bourgoyne et al. 1991) and the
latter contributing to well cleaning from cuttings
(Pilehvari et al. 1999; Kelessidis and Bandelis,
2004). In view of the fact that shear rates are
also different for the different models, one has
to wonder what would be the best fit rheological
model of a drilling fluid.
It is, therefore, essential to be able to choose the
best rheological model of these dispersions and
to determine the consequences on the variables
of interest, because the integration of rheologic
parameters with the hydraulic parameters is of
special importance to drilling industry
(Maglione et al. 1999). Rheological data of
water-bentonite dispersions has thus been
analyzed using Newtonian and true shear rates,
and the best rheological model was determined,
among the three considered, Casson, Robertson-
Stiff and Herschel-Bulkley, using three
statistical indicators. Then, the effect on
pressure loss, velocity profiles and transition
from laminar to turbulent flow was considered,
using the models developed by Kelessidis et al.
(2006) and Founargiotakis et al. (2007)
discussed above. The results indicated that the
Herschel-Bulkley model based on true shear
rates was the best rheological model, amongst
the three considered. Pressure drop gradient
calculated with rheological parameters derived
 Advances in drilling hydraulics and drilling fluid rheology

using the true shear rates was all the time lower Al-Zahrani SM., (1997) ‘A generalized
than the corresponding one computed with rheological model for shear thinning fluids’,
rheological parameters determined using the Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering,
Newtonian shear rates by approximately 15%. 17, 211-215.
Analysis for the velocity profiles in pipe and
annuli showed also differences for the two cases API RP13D, (2006), ‘Recommended practice on
with the plug width being larger when using the rheology and hydraulics of oil-well drilling
Newtonian shear rates derived rheological fluids’, Fifth edt., Washington DC, API
parameters (Figure 10).
Bailey, W. J. and J. M. Peden, (2000) ‘A
Generalized and Consistent Pressure Drop and
Conclusions
Flow Regime Transition Model for Drilling
We have reviewed results from recent work
Hydraulics,’ SPE Drill. Completion 15, 44–56.
from our laboratory on drilling hydraulics and
drilling fluid rheology. Extensive data analysis
Barnes HA, Hutton JF, Walters K, (1993) ‘An
has shown that drilling fluids can be modeled
Introduction to rheology’, Elsevier, Amsterdam.
best when the three parameter Herschel-Bulkley
model is used, and it has become our model of
Becker, T.E., Morgan, R.G., Chin, W.C. and
choice.
Griffith, J.E., (2003), ‘Improved rheology
model and hydraulic analysis for tomorrow’s
Results have then been presented of model
wellbore fluid applications.’, Paper SPE 84215
predictions and measurements for pressure loss
presented at the SPE Productions and
estimation of Herschel-Bulkley fluid in
Operations Symposium, Oklahoma City, OK
concentric and eccentric annuli. The model uses
the developed equation for the local power law
Bern PA, E.K. Morton, M. Zamora, R. May, D.
parameters for concentric annulus and a
Moran, T. Hemphill, L. Robinson, I. Cooper, S.
correction factor for eccentric annuli. The
Shah, and D.V. Flores, (2007) ‘Modernization
results show that the model predicts very well
of the API Recommended Practice on Rheology
data for concentric and eccentric annulus and
and Hydraulics: Creating Easy Access to
can be considered an improvement of the
Integrated Wellbore Fluids Engineering\, SPE
recently API proposed procedure.
Drill. and Completion, 197-204.
Measurements to determine drilling fluid
Bourgoyne, A. T., M. E. Chenevert, K. K.
rheological model are prone to errors and these
Millheim and F. S. Young, Jr., (1991) “Applied
have been reviewed. End-effects can be
Drilling Engineering,” SPE Textbook Series,
significant and can be determined. The
Richardson TX.
assumption of Newtonian shear rates in the flow
geometry also leads to errors and true shear
Dalamarinis, P., (2009), ‘Computational models
rates should instead be used. Wall slip should
and experimental verification for rheology and
not be a concern, if API pre-shearing practices
pressure drop of drilling fluids in a flow loop
are observed. The best rheological model is
system simulating horizontal drilling’, Diploma
shown to be the Herschel-Bulkley model using
thesis, Technical University of Crete (in greek).
true shear rates and determination of its three
rheological parameters can lead to better
Dodge DW and Metzner AB., (1959),
estimates of total pressure losses in the annulus.
‘Turbulent flow in non-Newtonian systems’,
AIChE J. 5, 189–204.
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Figure-1: Comparison of pressure loss concentric annulus data (70mm-by-40mm) with predictions
via the Kelessidis method (Founargiotakis et al., 2008) and the API method (Bern et al., 2007).
(From Dalamarinis 2009).
7000

6000

5000
dpf/dL(Pa/m)

Turbulent
4000
Transition
3000
Laminar

2000

1000
Measured Prediction
0
0.002 0.003 0.004 0.005 0.006 0.007
3
flow rate (m /s)

Figure-2: Comparison of predictions with experimental results of Langlinais et al. (1983)for 0.062-
by-0.0334m annulus (from Founargiotakis et al., 2008).
 Advances in drilling hydraulics and drilling fluid rheology

Figure-3: Comparison of pressure loss of 100% eccentric annulus data (70mm-by-40mm) with
predictions via the Kelessidis method and the API method, with predictions corrected by
Haciislamoglou and Cartalos (1994) corrections. (From Dalamarinis 2009).

Figure-4: Rheograms for Newtonian shear rates and Herschel-Bulkley shear rates for a bentonite
dispersion.

Figure-5: comparison of pressure losses for using Newtonian and HB-true shear rates to estimate
rheological parameters for flow of a drilling fluid with τ = 0.41 + 0.08 ⋅ γ& 0.69 in an annulus of
0.216m-by-0.127m. (From Maglione and Kelessidis, 2010)

9
 V. C. Kelessidis

Frame 2410 = 40.2s Frame 3130 = 52.2s

Figure-6: Effect of the top section of the bob on the distribution of injected dye. Fluid is Water-Pac
(50ppm) solution, behaving as power law fluid (From Rune et al., 2009)

Figure-7: Pressure loss for a Herschel-Bulkley fluid flowing in a 8.5-in by 3.5-in annulus with
rheological parameters estimated with the standard procedure and with the additional end-effect
τ std = 16.8 + 0.07 ⋅ γ& 0.77 ; τ corr = 15.1 + 0.04 ⋅ γ& 0.83

Figure-8: Rheograms with B1 and B5 configurations for bentonite 5.0% and 6.42% w/v and data fit
to Herschel-Bulkley rheological model
 Advances in drilling hydraulics and drilling fluid rheology

Figure-9: Comparison of rheograms of original data with results from rheological models for a
bentonite-lignite-water suspension (from Kelessidis et al., 2006).

Figure-10: Predicted velocity profiles in annulus (0.2159 x 0.127 m) in laminar flow for HB model
rheological parameters derived by Newtonian and true shear rate for a water-bentonite dispersion.

11