X.P. Shen, A. Diaz1, T. Sheehy2
CMC-Computers, Materials & Continua, Vol.20, No.3, pp. 205-224, 2010, DOI:10.3970/cmc.2010.020.205
Abstract This paper presents a case study for the design of a mud-weight window (MWW) with three-dimensional (3-D), finite-element (FE) tools for subsalt wells. The trajectory of the target well penetrates a 7 km thick salt body. A numerical scheme has been proposed for calculating the shear failure gradient (SFG) and fracture gradient (FG) with 3-D FE software. User subroutines have been developed to address non-uniform pore-pressure distribution.
A series of FE calculations were performed to obtain the MWW of the target wellbore, which consists of the SFG and FG for the subsalt sections. Although no reverse faulting structure exists in… More >
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