PROCEDURES AND INSTRUMENTS FOR MONITORING PROCESSES AND MECHANISMS OF CUTTING TRANSPORT IN HYDRAULIC CLEANING OF HORIZONTAL WELLS

The article relevance is caused by the need to identify, understand, predict and control physical mechanisms that accompany well cleaning from drill cuttings. The risk of poor-quality cleaning creates conditions that exacerbate the processes of stuck pipe, well control, reduced drilling speed, and wear of drilling special equipment, especially when increasing the number of holes drilled at large angles. Such extreme situations are characteristic for long horizontal wells. Currently, they are widely used due to their increased productivity and exceptional efficiency in reaching certain productive formations. All this characterizes the problem of finding and developing effective methods for cleaning wells, as one of the most important tasks of modern drilling. The main aim of this article is to better understand the phenomena and actually develop methods for predicting processes during hydraulic cleaning of horizontal wells from cuttings in order to determine the priorities of future scientific and practical development of cleaning processes. Methods: theoretical and experimental modeling of flows of solid particles carried by the flow of a viscous medium in situations related to the cleaning of horizontal wells; practical research methods for issues such as sedimentation, coagulation and the flow of rheologically complex viscous media in the annulus of wells with arbitrary geometries. Results. The paper introduces the review and analysis of modern experimental and theoretical results of modeling the process of cleaning horizontal wells. Based on the results of monitoring, the authors have formulated a number of criteria-based relationships and rules of thumb that guide technical design of equipment components and forecasts of optimal hydraulic cleaning conditions. The capabilities of models, methods, and tools of experimental equipment for recording, forecasting, and controlling the regimes of translational-rotational motion of mixtures in wells with a curved wall geometry are critically evaluated. The inconsistencies of the observed and calculated processes during hydraulic cleaning within the framework of the equipment used are explained.