A hydro-mechanical sand erosion model for sand production simulation

Sand production while producing hydrocarbons from a well is a critical issue faced by the oil and gas industry. It is a complex process controlled by several factors, including the mechanical failure of materials around the wellbore and the material erosion due to fluid flow. The coupling between these factors leads to considerable challenges in modeling and predicting sand production. This paper presents a finite element based approach for simulating the realistic sanding process, considering coupling between mechanical failure and hydrodynamic erosion of the rock. A well calibrated sand criterion proposed by Papamichos was implemented to model sand erosion. An adaptive meshing technique was used to track receding of the eroded surfaces and to progressively modify boundary conditions on new surfaces, which are important for capturing the realistic sanding process. Sand production in both open-hole and perforated-casing completions was simulated to illustrate capabilities of presented method. Numerical results show that sand production is controlled primarily by the plastic strain and flow velocity around the wellbore. Other parameters, including drawdown, in-situ stress, and perforation orientation, are shown to have considerable influence on sand production rate and are discussed in this paper.