Nikolaou, Michael2018-03-052018-03-05December 22015-12December 2http://hdl.handle.net/10657/2843With 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.application/pdfengThe author of this work is the copyright owner. UH Libraries and the Texas Digital Library have their permission to store and provide access to this work. Further transmission, reproduction, or presentation of this work is prohibited except with permission of the author(s).Minimum Well Profile EnergyDownhole Drilling AutomationCatenarySplineUnconventional wellsThree-dimensional (3D)2018-03-05Thesisborn digital