Control of Drilling Vibrations: A Time-Delay System-Based Approach

The main purpose of this study is the control of both axial and torsional vibrations occurring along a rotary oilwell drilling system. This work completes a previous author's paper (Boussaada et al. [2012a]) which presents the description of the qualitative dynamical response of a rotary drilling system with a drag bit, using a model that takes into consideration the axial and the torsional vibration modes of the bit. The studied model, based on the interface bit-rock, contains a couple of wave equations with boundary conditions consisting of the angular speed and the axial speed at the top additionally to the angular and axial acceleration at the bit whose contain a realistic frictional torque. Our analysis is based on the center manifold theorem and normal forms theory whose allow us to simplify the model. By this way we design two control laws allowing to suppress the undesired vibrations guaranteeing a regular drilling process.