MODELING THE PENETRATION DISTANCE OF POWER-LAW CEMENTING FLUID TRANSPORT IN DEEP-WATER WEAKLY CONSOLIDATED FORMATION

During the development of deep-water oil and gas resources, severe engineering problems or even marine geological hazards might be induced by the complex geological characteristics of deep-water weakly consolidated (DWC) formation. To solve these problems, the power-law cementing fluid was used to solidify the DWC formation during the well-cementing operation. However, the transportation process of cementing fluid in DWC formation is still unclear. To guide the solidification operation of DWC formation, a mathematical model for predicting the penetration distance of cementing fluid in DWC formation was proposed based on the generalized Darcy’s law and fractal theory. All the parameters in this model have clear physical meaning and no empirical parameter is involved. The numerical and experimental validation results show that the proposed model calculated penetration distance agrees well with both simulated and experimental results. The model capacity relates to the penetration pressure, the viscosity of cementing fluid, the permeability of formation, the effective radius of the flow path and the fractal dimension of formation. The maximum error of this model is less than 20%, which indicates that the mathematical model is reliable.