Finite-Element Modeling of Borehole Breakouts for In Situ Stress Determination
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 18, Issue 12
Abstract
Borehole breakouts appear in drilling and production operations when rock subjected to in situ stress experience shear failure. By finite-element modeling of borehole breakouts, the authors obtained the stress state close to the borehole wall, the shape of borehole breakouts, and the mechanism of borehole breakouts in terms of initiation, propagation, and stability. It is desirable that this information on borehole breakouts be used to determine in situ stress by inverse analysis. Artificial neural network provides such a tool to establish the relationship between in situ stress and information on borehole breakouts. Determination of in situ stress by inverse analysis consisted of two steps. First, finite-element modeling provided sets of data on in situ stress and borehole breakout measures, which were used to train an artificial neural network that could eventually represent the relationship between the in situ stress and borehole breakout measures. Second, for a given measure of borehole breakouts, the trained artificial neural network was used to predict the corresponding in situ stress. Verification of the modeling of borehole breakouts was conducted, and numerical experiments were carried out. The results showed that the inverse analysis based on finite-element modeling of borehole breakouts and artificial neural network can effectively determine the in situ stress.
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Acknowledgments
The support of the US Department of Energy [Grant DE-FE0026825, University Coalition for Fossil Energy Research (UCFER)] is greatly acknowledged.
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 18 • Issue 12 • December 2018
Copyright
© 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 26, 2017
Accepted: Jun 12, 2018
Published online: Oct 4, 2018
Published in print: Dec 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Mar 4, 2019
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