An Open-Source Enabled Drilling Simulation Consortium for Academic and Commercial Applications
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AbstractSimulation of drilling processes involves the seamless integration of strongly coupled physics, numeric, and economic models. Operators desire advanced drilling simulation software that can mimic reality and yet be practical for daily operations. At the same time, academic researchers are devoting time and effort to develop robust and accurate models of every module of an integrated drilling environment but are challenged with translating their original contributions into the operational setting. We seek to solve both of these issues through a distinctive collaboration consortium based on an open-source paradigm. We describe and propose an advanced drilling simulation developed through a joint industry consortium at Texas A&M University. The simulator provides free access to sophisticated and reliable drilling dynamics solvers. This includes drill string dynamics, torque and drag analysis, geologic modeling, hydraulics, and wellbore pressure modeling, visualization, and operator interfaces. The simulator is written in C++ and is built on top of high-performance open source libraries that leverages parallel computing, GPU acceleration, multibody, and computational fluid dynamics solvers as well as other tools (see figure for further details). We will assist industry and academic users to employ our open-source tool. In addition, we will help said parties further develop our framework into proprietary and protected business software via the addition of custom functionality. The simulator core was successfully developed and has been used to model horizontal drilling, while providing near real-time performance. The framework has been used in several applications successfully, including modeling shallow horizontal jetting, rock drilling, and steering; as well as reconstructing spatial data from high fidelity downhole signals for borehole evaluation, and the development of improved downhole navigation algorithms. We believe that a collaborative development effort between academia and industry will bring solutions to complex modeling needs faster and more economically than any individual endeavor. To this end, the authors will also show how one can partner with Texas A&M University to obtain access to the open-source enabled drilling simulation framework and platform to collaborate, improve and create solutions for new and existing problems.
