SOCIETY OF PETROLEUM ENGINEERS OF AIME 6500 North Central Expreseway Dallas 6, Texas HIS IS A PREPRINT PAPER mrzr SPE 587 - SUBJECT TO CORRECTION ANALOG COMPUTER SIMULATION OF SUCKER ROD PUMPING SYSTEMS By Warren E. Snyder and Alfred J. Bossert, Midwest Research Institute, Kansas City, Mo. Publication Rights served ‘This paper is to be presented at the Rocky Mountain Joint Regional Meeting to be held in Denver, Colo., May 27-28, 1965, and is considered the property of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. Permis- sion to publish is hereby restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words, with no illustrations, unless the paper is specifically released to the press by the Editor of the Joumal of Petroleun ‘Technology or the Executive Secretary. and by whom the paper is presented. ‘Technolog Such abstract should contain conspicuous acl Publication elsewhere after publication in Joumal of Petroleun or Society of Petroleum Engineers Journal is granted on request, providing proper credit is sdgnent of where given that publication and the original presentation of the paper. Discussion of this paper is invited. of Petroleum Engineers office. Three copies of any discussion should be sent to the Society Such discussion may be presented st the above meeting and considered for publication in one of the two SPE magazines with the paper. pomaor A method is presented for simlating complet sucker rod pumping systems on an analog computer. Polished rod caras, pump cards and crank torque cards, as well as time histories of these and many Other forces and displacezente, can be ob- tained for a wide range of pumping conditions by simple adjustments available in the analog. INTRODUCTION ‘The analog computer is well suited to the study of complex systems which have many variable parameters. The computer cireuitry described here was used to record more than 9,000 dynamom- eter cards covering a wide range of pumping conditions. Included in the study were the effects of pump load, pumping speed, prime mover slip and inertia, pumping unit geometry, counter- weighting, tapered rod strings and tubing anchors | The many tests completed could not be made on a single Well and only With @ great expenditure of time and money could they have been completed on a large number of velis. DE PUIG sysTm Fig. 1 4s a schemstic drawing of a sucker da pumping installation. ‘The principal parts of ‘the system are the prime mover, pumping unit, sucker rod, pump, tubing and fluid colum. Bach Tilustrations at end of paper. of these parts responds to the forces acting upon it to produce some new motion in the system. The principal parts may include several mechani- cal parts as in the instance of the prime mover which includes the motor, belt drive and gear reducer. Fig. 2 is a block diagran of the system as it vas arranged far study on the analog computer. For clarity, the two signal paths of the crank are treated separately. (CRANK MOTTON Fig. 3b] shows the cireuit used to compute ‘the motion of the crank. Tt is a simple harmonic oscillator, as shown by the heavy lines, modified| for variable velocity and amplitude stability. With the notation of Fig. 3[a], the basic equa~ ‘tions of the crank are! x=Cein@, y=C cose and ec cos ony , at Fae : ao, ao =-CsineS@. 98 | v mo ae at For satisfactory operation, the crank circuit must have extreme amplitude stability. Over a Jong period of time, small errors in the oscil- Jator cause a gradual change in amplitude. To correct this cumlative error, a stabilizer circuit, as shown in the lower portion of Fig.AALOG COMPUTER SIMULATION OF SUCKER ROD PUMPING SYSTEMS SPE-587 3{b], was added. With this stabilizer, the Oscillator amplitude renains constant for many hours of operation. ‘TE PUMPING UNIT The purpose of the pumping unit is to con= vert the rotary motion of the prime mover to the reciprocating motion required to drive the sucker rod. Polished rod motion is determined Jointly by the crank notion and the pumping unit geometry ‘The geometry ic mathematically more complex than is desirable to solve on the analog computer. However, the polished rod motion can be expressed| satisfactorily by the first six terms of a Fourier series. A typical analysis of one of ‘the class of pumping units which have a large crank to pitman ratio yields: uu = K (-1.000 cos @ 0.0839 cos 20 -0.0164 sin 6 40.0058 sin 26 -0.0087 cos 58 ~@.0147 sin 30 ~0.0008 eos 48 ~0.0024 sin <6 40,0005 cos 5@ -0,0001 sin 50 tees) Clearly, harmonics higher than the third can be neglected for the analog study. For computation, the harmonics were expressed in terns of the fundamental to yield: us Ay cos @ 4B, sin @ ¥A,(2 cos® @ -1) 4B,(2 sin @ cos 6) +hg(4 cos® @ -3 cos @) +B,(5 sin 0-4 sin® 0) The corresponding circuit is shown in Fig. k[a]. Me crank torque due to the foree at the polished rod can be found by the principle of virtual work: 3, 20 =F, au au pg, & T-FRoe The value of du/A0 is obtained from @ Fourter series as show in Fig. lb]. PRIME MOVER Fig. 5[b] shows the circuits used to eim- late the prine mover. ‘The upper portion of the circuit computes the torque due to the rod load. The lower portion contributes a torque due to counterveight which is assumed to act in a verti- cal direction at the end of the crank. ‘Thus, Toy = CW sin 6. The central, heavy portion of ‘the cireuit eimilates the motor or engine used to drive the ayeten. Crank velocity varies during each pumping cycle because of the effects of Fluctuating torques on motor speed. In genera: the velocity will increase and decrease twice during each crank revolution vith the magnitude of the speed variation dependent upon the tongue variation, the eysten inertia and the motor characteristics. The motor characteristics vary widely. Electric motors are classifies se hormal clip, medium lip and high elip, depending upon the change of cpeed rom rated load to no- oad; typical values may range from 2 to 13 per cent, ingine drives uay have either snail of large speed variation, depending on the engine type end the governor setting. Motor torque characteristics are usually sown in curves sini- lar to Tig. S{al, with the scales of torque and speed dependent upon the motor size. For this study, each motor type was simulated by @ func~ ‘tion generator aa a characteristic curve with nondimensionel scales. ‘The scales vere then adjusted for each test to center the operating point about the intersection of the oroken lines. In operation, the time average value of a0/ at must produce the desired operating epeed. This speed adjustment is accomplished by proper selection of the average motor torque, [Tq] avg. For convenience, the adjustment is mae autonati- cally by the upper integrator, This integration will gradually shift the velue of [1] avg. unt "> ‘the averege value of d9/at cancels the referenc voltage at the input to the integrator. ‘The tine constant of this integrator is made long enough ‘to avoid. any appreciable fluctuation of [,] ave. during a pumping cycle. The value of do/dt is obtained by integrating the net torque, T = Ty - T- Tw wes [aa aT SUCKER ROD STRING ‘The continuous sucker rod was represented on the analog by a lumped paraneter approximation. he rod vas considered as divided into 13 sec- lone, each section consisting of two springs and a’nass, as shown in Fig. 6la], The mass of each section, M, vas 1/15 of the total mass of ‘the rodj each individual spring had s constant, 2K, equal to 26 tines the over-all rod spring cotstant. Viscous damping was applied to each section. The force on each section ts caused by the relstive displacement of the preceding section, ‘the relative displacement of the following sec tion, and the damping. ‘The net force is equal to ‘the acceleration of the mass. ‘The resulting equations aze as follows:‘SPB-587, WARREN B. SNYDBR and ALFRED J. BOSSERT T After simplification, these equations become = HE (2ug-Suy + ug) = Diy ts = B (wpe, he = HE (uya-ane + was) “Phe Hy =p (Myp-Sys + Sip) - Dh The value of gk/M was selected to be 200. The resulting analog circuit is shown in Fig. 6[b]. For tapered rods, the string was suitably altered at each Junction between the rod sizes. PUMP ‘The pump is the principal nonlinear elenent in the analog system; its action forms the mathe- matical link between the forces and displacenents at the bottom end of the sucker rod. The action of the pump is as follows: 1. During the pump upstroke, the plunger supports the entire welght of the oil column plus the fluid dynamic and viscous forces [minus the casing pressure, if any]; the force in the last spring of the sucker rod mst then be y= Fy = Upward Downward Doping Section Spring Force - Spring Force - _Force Acceleration ) ‘ hy Ak(ugty) = Kuru) = hy, My Kuju) = Klugug) = y= : Me K(ugeug) = K(ugeug) = gt 4a le: K(upr-uy2) = - oi, My : nate he g he . u cag R(uye-tys) - (yup) = yg a Mo + Dynamic Forces. 2. During the pump downstroke, the entire weight of the oll colum is carried by the puxp body; the force in the last sucker rod spring must be zero. 3. When the force in the last sucker rod section is greater than zero, but less than F,, ‘the pump plunger mst be stationary. The basic circuit used to simlate the punp is a conventional backlash circuit as shown in the heavy portion of Fig. 7[a]. It consists of separate branches for the downstroke and up- stroke; the forees during the up and downstrokes are supplied separately at the left. OTL comma The dynamic, viscous and compressible effects of the fluid colum vere simlated by a lumped systen quite similar to that used for the sucker rod colum. With the notation of Fig. 7b] the equations for the first section are as +x a z 7a) Tentical equations apply to each of the other four sections. he circuit 1s nearly the cane as that shown earlier in Fig. 6. rq The value of Q, is obtained from the cireuit| shown in the lover Portion of Fig. 7[a]. The value of p; is, in tum, used to compute the fluid loads for the punp cirouit. TUBING STRING The pump body 1s attached to tubing string which 1s anchored at some point along its length.