Summary
Woven-metal-mesh sand screens, commonly known as premium screens, have been
used extensively by the industry. Sand-retention testing is often executed to
evaluate the performance of these screens and to establish empirical guidelines
for screen-size selection. These tests are tedious, however, and the results
are prone to artifacts and have been used, at best, to correlate trends in
sand-retention performance with select sand-size-distribution parameters. A new
method incorporating results from numerical modeling, in addition to
experimental data, is presented to estimate the mass and size distribution of
the produced solids in prepack sand-retention tests (SRTs) through premium
screens. This method provides a fast, reliable correlation to estimate sand
production through premium mesh screens when the size distribution of the
formation sand is known.
This paper presents results from a wide range of pre-pack sand-retention
experiments. In these tests, which represent complete hole collapse, the mass
of sand produced and its size distribution over time are measured. Results of
3D, discrete-element computer simulations of woven-screen geometry placed in
contact with granular sandpacks of approximately 100,000 particles are also
presented. On the basis of both the simulations and the experiments, a new
method for screen selection is presented. This method is based on a correlation
that allows one to use the entire sand-size distribution of the formation sand
and to estimate the mass and size distribution of the produced sand. The method
is validated by comparisons with experimental data.
A new method and new correlations for estimating the mass and size
distribution of produced solids in prepack tests through premium screens are
presented. Key differences in sand-retention mechanisms between premium screens
and wire-wrapped screens (WWSs) have been identified. The method uses the
entire-formation sand-size distribution (as opposed to a single design point),
and has been validated with laboratory tests. The method also helps in
screening anomalous test results.
© 2012. Society of Petroleum Engineers
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History
- Original manuscript received:
9 November 2011
- Meeting paper published:
31 October 2011
- Revised manuscript received:
16 April 2012
- Manuscript approved:
6 June 2012
- Published online:
16 August 2012
- Version of record:
18 September 2012
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