Three-dimensional trajectory design for horizontal well based on optimal switching algorithms

This paper considers a three-dimensional trajectory design problem for horizontal well. The problem is formulated as an optimal control problem of switched systems with continuous state inequality constraints. Since the complexity of such constraints and the switching instants is unknown, it is difficult to solve the problem by standard optimization techniques. To overcome the difficulty, by a time-scaling transformation, a smoothing technique and a penalty function method, an efficient computational method is proposed for solving this problem. Convergence results show that, for a sufficiently large penalty parameter, any local optimal solution of the approximate problem is also a local optimal solution of the original problem. Two numerical examples are presented to illustrate the efficiency of the approach proposed.