Eindhoven University of Technology Ph.D. candidate Mohammad Hossein Abbasi has developed numerical tools to support the safer, cheaper and more efficient drilling of deep wells for exploitation of natural resources. Abbasi’s models are accurate enough for virtual drilling scenario testing and drilling automation, and they speed up simulations up to 70 times.

Drilling of deep wells offers value for global economies, for instance for the exploration of minerals, geothermal energy and oil and gas. However, the remaining reserves of these resources are found in difficult-to-access, unconventional places, and their exploitation needs to be balanced with environmental concerns and the high cost of drilling operations. The models developed by Abassi are a step toward advances in operational and environmental safety and cost-effectiveness of resource exploration.

The objective of the research project is to develop a framework to model the hydraulics involved in the multiple phases of managed pressure drilling (MPD) and to package the models in software directly usable in industry. To deliver fast results during drilling operations, it is critical to reduce the complexity of these models as much as possible. Abbasi’s models combine high predictive capacity and low complexity, which makes them appropriate for use in both virtual drilling scenario testing and drilling automation.

To develop the models, Abbasi and his colleagues developed accurate and physically relevant mathematical models and many novel numerical techniques that are an improvement over the currently used numerical techniques. The new ones are much more computationally efficient and fast enough to be run in real-time simulations, which makes them much less expensive to use, according to Abassi.

Abbasi’s techniques speed up the simulations up to 70 times while retaining 99% accuracy. With his methods, predicting MPD hydraulics can be done much faster than real time, which speeds up the optimization of well plans considerably. Moreover, model-based controllers can be efficiently tested on this fast platform, which is an accurate representative of the real drilling well. With these advances, the safety and cost-effectiveness of resource exploration in Europe and beyond can be increased massively.