Horizontal directional drilling pulling forces prediction methods - A critical review

This work is motivated by the need for prediction of pulling forces during pulling back phase in the horizontal directional drilling (HDD) installations for steel or polyethylene pipe. Six current prediction models are reviewed and components of pulling force resistance used in calculations are discussed. Two HDD installations are used to evaluate the accuracies of six models, including a 1816.2 m steel pipe crossing of the Yangtze River, Nanjing, China, and a 200 m polyethylene pipe installation at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada. Comparison of the results show that Driscopipe method and Drillpath method underestimate the maximum pulling forces in both steel pipe and polyethylene pipe cases, ASTM F 1962 method underestimates the maximum pulling force in steel pipe case while PRCI method and NEN 3650 method overestimate the maximum pulling force in polyethylene case, PRCI method, NEN 3650 method and developed PipeForce method are suitable for steel pipe case, ASTM F 1962 method and the PipeForce method are acceptable for polyethylene pipe case.