Numerical Simulation of Sand Production Using Coupled DEM-LBM

Document Type : Research Article

Authors

1 Faculty of Engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

2 Civil Eng. Department, Faculty of engineering, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad

Abstract

Sand production imposes a considerable cost on the oil industry. In the current study, this phenomenon is studied numerically to better understand the particulate mechanism of sanding in unconsolidated sandstones and study the effect of confining stress and pressure drawdown on sand production. The discrete element method (DEM) is used to simulate the particulate media, and the lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM) is adopted to model the fluid flow through it. The two methods are coupled, and the fluid-solid interaction is modeled using the immersed moving boundary (IMB) method. An in-house computer program is developed based on these methods to simulate the 2D sanding procedure under radial fluid flow and isotropic stress in the absence of particle cementation. The results show that the number of produced particles and the sanding rate increase with the increase of confining stress. Also, after the sand initiation, the sanding rate in all models decreases due to the formation of sand arches around the model’s inner cavity. These arches are prone to instability, and new larger arches replace them after their collapse. After examining the effect of fluid pressure difference on sand production, it is concluded that the pressure difference has little influence on sand production at relatively low-stress levels. However, at higher stress levels, the pressure difference has a considerable impact on sanding results as it increases the number of produced particles more than twice with a 50% increase in pressure difference. This study confirms that the 2D coupled DEM-LBM model can properly capture the mechanism of the sand production phenomenon.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Amirkabir Journal of Civil Engineering
Volume 54, Issue 1
April 2022
Pages 53-74

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