Continuous Real-Time Measurement of Drilling Trajectory with New State
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144 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON INSTRUMENTATION AND MEASUREMENT, VOL. 65, NO. 1, JANUARY 2016 Continuous Real-Time Measurement of Drilling Trajectory With New State-Space Models of Kalman Filter Qilong Xue, Henry Leung, Fellow, IEEE, Ruihe Wang, Baolin Liu, and Yunsheng Wu Abstract— Rotary-steerable drilling provides unique features drillstring attitude (inclination and azimuth) measurement such as an extended reach and accurate well trajectory control. is usually carried out when the drillstring is not rotating. These characteristics can notably increase drilling efficiency However, as drilling technology improves, continuous mea- and safety. One of the main technical difficulties of rotary- steerable drilling is dynamically measuring the spatial attitude surement of the well trajectory becomes increasingly impor- at the bottom of the rotating drillstring as the drillstring rotates. tant. It is also essential in a rotary-steerable system (RSS). We developed a strap-down measurement system, with a triaxial An RSS [5]–[7] is a mechatronics tool developed for direc- accelerometer and triaxial magnetometers installed near the bit. tional drilling. It can drill a more economical and smoother The inclination and azimuth can be measured in real time even borehole. Since the introduction of RSS, rotary-steerable as the drillstring rotates. Although the magnetic system is the norm, we can use this system to achieve continuous measurement technology has achieved notable progress in reliability and while drilling; to achieve this, a novel state-space model is has become a standard drilling tool in many worldwide proposed here and the Kalman filter is used to estimate the applications. The application of RSS is restricted to high-cost states. Simulation and experiments show that a continuous-survey offshore sites and is becoming more common in cost-sensitive system with a Kalman filter approach can improve measurement land work, especially in shale-gas and shale-oil drilling [8]. precision and reduce errors produced by drillstring vibration. Despite popular use of the RSS, field-trial results of Index Terms— Continuous measurement while drilling continuous measurement of inclination and azimuth have not (MWD), directional drilling, Kalman filter, state-space model, been well documented in the literature. However, measuring strap down. the posture of downhole tools as the drillstring rotates is I. INTRODUCTION essential because of its closed-loop control structure [9], [10]. IRECTIONAL drilling technology involves directing A bottom-drilling tool shows complex dynamics while rotating Da wellbore along a predefined trajectory, which owing to the combined effects of nonlinear vibrations, such dramatically reduces costs and saves time during drilling as vertical vibration, horizontal vibration, eddy, and sticky operations [1]–[3]. During the last several years, more and slip [11], [12]. The effects of such vibrations cause the more attention had been paid to the development of directional measurement sensors to generate large errors. This is a huge well-drilling technologies. Technology for directional- challenge for signal processing [9], which is completely drilling navigation is currently based on an integrated different from the measurement-while-drilling (MWD) survey magnetometer and accelerometer triad [4]. To compute the systems in current oil and gas industry. bottom-hole assembly (BHA) position, data of the earth’s Continuous MWD is studied under laboratory magnetic field and the force of gravity are measured. The conditions using a gyroscope-based system [13]–[15]. surveying system is executed along the well trajectory at ElGizawy et al. [13], Elgizawy et al. [14], and stationary survey stations. In drilling engineering, the bottom Jurkov et al. [15] proposed an advanced inclination and direction sensor package based on an inertial navigation Manuscript received April 15, 2015; revised August 3, 2015; accepted system (INS). They verified the reliability of the algorithm August 4, 2015. Date of publication October 6, 2015; date of current version December 7, 2015. This work was supported in part by the Fundamental through simulation, which used INS to achieve continuous Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant 2652015063 and in MWD with high accuracy. The influences of vibration part by the Public Welfare Fund Project through the Ministry of Land and and temperature on MWD were also analyzed [16]–[18]. Resources under Grant 201411054. The Associate Editor coordinating the review process was Dr. George Xiao. Yanshun et al. [19] and Chen et al. [20] conducted a Q. Xue and B. Liu are with the Key Laboratory on Deep GeoDrilling similar study by developing an MWD instrument based Technology, Ministry of Land and Resources, School of Engineering and on a predigested inertial measurement unit. However, they Technology, China University of Geosciences, Beijing 100083, China (e-mail: [email protected]). did not consider the downhole complex situations, severe H. Leung is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, vibration, and high temperature. These are great challenges University of Calgary, Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada. for measurement of accuracy and sensors’ lifetime. Drillstring R. Wang is with the College of Petroleum Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao 266580, China. vibration can greatly affect the life of the gyroscope, and an Y. Wu is with State Grid Haixing Power Supply Company, increasing temperature can cause drift error in the gyroscope. Cangzhou 510623, China. The approaches mentioned above can increase the accuracy Color versions of one or more of the figures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. of measurements to a certain extent. However, effort still needs Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TIM.2015.2479096 to be made in order to improve the performance of the MWD 0018-9456 © 2015 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission. See http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/rights/index.html for more information. XUE et al.: CONTINUOUS REAL-TIME MEASUREMENT OF DRILLING TRAJECTORY 145 Fig. 1. (a) Multimodel measurement system at the drill bit. (b) Construction of measurement system. TABLE I x, y,andz axes, respectively. Moreover, mx , m y,andmz are CHARACTERISTICS OF SENSORS defined as survey signals of the triaxial magnetometers on the x, y,andz axes, respectively. Assume that the earth’s magnetic = ( 2 + 2 + 2)1/2 field strength is M. Obviously, M mx m y mz . Under a certain sample frequency (100 Hz), the measuring signal can be considered as a time series. Assume that the acceleration of gravity is G,and gx, gy,andgz are defined as survey signals of gravity acceleration on the x, y,andz axes, respectively. Then, = ( 2 + 2 + 2)1/2 , , ) G gx gy gz . The survey signals (ax ay az of the triaxial accelerometers include not only the acceleration of gravity but also the acceleration of the drillstring vibration. Electronic instruments consisting of three-axis accelerometers instrument. Qilong Xue et al. [9] developed a strap-down and three-axis magnetometers are shown to relate to the multimode surveying system. They gave more consideration measured inclination and azimuth. The drillstring posture is to the actual situation of the drilling process and used field determined via the following known equations: test data to study the measurement algorithm. This system is ⎛ ⎞ more conducive to field applications. Moreover, improvement g2 + g2 ⎝ x y ⎠ in accuracy is crucial, especially for the continuous MWD Inc = arctan (1) gz of an RSS, for precise and efficient measurement of wellbores drilled for oil and gas exploration. Within the signal-processing G · (gxm y − gymx ) Azi = arctan . (2) community, Kalman filter still remains a very active topic. This m g2 + g2 − g (g m − g m ) paper is concerned with improving the accuracy and stability z x y z x x y y of inclination and azimuth measurements of the accelerometer The three-axis inclination and six-axis azimuth equa- and magnetometer. We developed new state-space models that tions [22] are used in the static MWD surveys as industry- were applied to the Kalman filter model. The algorithm greatly standard survey methods. The azimuth direction is determined improved the accuracy of well-trajectory measurements and in a stationary mode by using three-axis magnetometers, while is expected to be applied to ordinary magnetic surveying the inclination and the tool face angle are determined using systems, which are more widely used in drilling engineering. three-axis accelerometers. Drilling has to pause frequently at surveying stations in order to allow the inclination and II. MEASUREMENT SYSTEM azimuth to be surveyed. The well trajectory is then computed We develop a strap-down MWD system here that incorpo- between the two surveying stations based on some mathe- rates three-axis magnetometers and three-axis accelerometers matical assumptions; It is assumed that the drilled distance arranged in three mutually orthogonal directions [9], [10], is a smooth arc. In (1) and (2), only the acceleration of as shown in Fig. 1(a). The magnetic measuring tools are gravity is concerned, and the drillstring vibration signals are installed in the interiors of nonmagnetic drill collars. These considered as noise. The determination of azimuth while special drill collars are usually designed from monel metal drilling (while the sensors are rotating) was not demonstrated to avoid external interference