Experimental Investigation and Analysis of Dynamic Buckling of Drill String in Horizontal Well

Abstract

Buckling of tubulars has been the subject of many researches in the past. However, the models in previous research always followed the same assumptions: the friction and rotation effects are ignored. The assumptions are relatively far from the reality. This paper focuses on the rotational drill string in horizontal well. The differential equation of the dynamic buckling is established considering some various factors, including friction, the drill string-borehole interaction, and rotation, and the equations of the critical load of the sinusoidal buckling and the spiral buckling are derived. Furthermore, the friction curve of the drill string and the critical load of the dynamic buckling during rotation are obtained. In addition, the influence of the rotational speed on the dynamic buckling and the axis orbit of the dynamic buckling are also gained. The results show that the critical load of the sinusoidal buckling has nothing to do with the rotational speed while the amplitude and the frequency of the dynamic buckling become larger with the increase of the rotational speed, and the dynamic buckling presents a completely different state with the development of the axial load at different speed ranges.