Critical states of drill strings in the channels of inclined boreholes

Abstract

The problem of determining the critical states and the postbuckling deformation of drill strings in the cavities of curvilinear boreholes is posed. The process of elastic bending of the drill string is associated with the motion of its axial line along the corresponding channel surface. On the basis of the theory of flexible curvilinear rods, a specially chosen moving system of axes is used to construct nonlinear ordinary differential equations describing the contact interaction between the drill string tube and the borehole wall. Themoving reference system allows us to separate the desired variables and decrease the order of the resolving equations. As an example, we solve the problem of stability of drill strings lying at the bottom of a cylindrical cavity in a rectilinear inclined borehole. The critical values of the axial forces are determined and the buckling modes are constructed. It is also shown that they have the form of edge effects typical of singularly perturbed equations. The developedmethods can be used in design of a curvilinear borehole and its possible driving conditions to determine the admissible values of the axial force and the torque at the point of the drill string suspension so as to prevent its bifurcation buckling.