Dynamic Analysis of a Drillstring-Riser System Drilling in Deep Water

Abstract

A mathematical model of a drillstring-riser system is developed to analyze the system dynamics when drilling in deep water. For the proposed model, a riser and a drillstring are combined as a pipe-in-pipe structure, along which the interactions between the riser and the drillstring are introduced by a series of spring-friction units. Numerical simulations of the developed mathematical model are carried out by Abaqus in which the finite element method is adopted. Comparing with the riser deflection calculated by previously published models which exclude the influences of the drillstring-riser interactions, the maximal riser deflection obtained by using the proposed drillstring-riser system is relatively small. Namely, the drillstring-riser interactions restrict the riser deflection. This finding indicates that, in a given safety margin of the riser deflection, the drillstring-riser system has stronger capacity of anti-deflection. Additionally, the influence of sea depth is investigated; the dynamic response of a drillstring-riser system drilling in deep water is obviously different from the corresponding condition drilling in shallow water. In order to maintain the drillstring-riser system work in a safe condition, the operations, such as thickening the riser wall, enhancing the control of the top drift, removing a part of buoyancy modules, decreasing WOB, and increasing the top tension of the riser, are suggested to be applied.