Three Dimensional Downhole Drilling Automation Based on Minimum Well Profile Energy

With increase in the complexity of the well, difficulty to match the actual well profile with the planned well profile increases. Objective of this study is to build a work flow for automating the borehole assembly (BHA) to take corrective actions upon detection of a deviation from the planned well path in a 3-D coordinate space, and construct as well as program a prototype demonstrating the proposed theory. The corrective paths would be conventional constant curvature curve and unconventional curves such as Catenary and Spline which are proven to be smooth there by reducing the torque and drag in the well. The main constraint that would govern the unknown parameters of the corrective path is the minimum well profile energy criterion which is excellent in producing smooth curves as it minimizes the curvature and torsion of the curve together. Balanced Tangential method and Minimum curvature method are used for building the corrective trajectory.