A Perforation-Erosion Model for Hydraulic-Fracturing Applications

Summary Perforation pressure drop and its decrease caused by perforation erosion during a hydraulic-fracturing treatment are critical factors that need to be considered in treatment design, particularly when the limited-entry technique is implemented along multiple perforation clusters to ensure more-uniform fluid distribution. The simultaneous increases in the discharge coefficient Cd and perforation diameter D during perforation erosion require consideration of the temporal changes of these two variables to characterize the perforation-erosion behavior. In this paper, we present a perforation-erosion model dependent on abrasion mechanisms and the procedure to determine the specific erosion parameters that can be corroborated from laboratory data. Our modeling results demonstrate that it is inappropriate to assume an alternate increase in Cd and D, as considered in some conventional correlations. Once the erosion parameters are empirically inferred, we incorporate our model into a nonplanar hydraulic-fracturing simulator to determine appropriate perforation-number distributions at different clusters to ensure a successful limited-entry treatment that generates relatively even fluid distribution and uniform fractures.