Characterization of Dynamic Pressure Response in Vertical Two Phase Flow

One of the problems encountered in drilling, especially in offshore environments is “kicks”. Kick is a sudden pressure imbalance in the wellbore during drilling operation. When this imbalances in pressure occurs the reservoir pressure has the ability to push the reservoir fluid into the wellbore. This may create a catastrophic event such as blow-out of the drilling rig. Thus, prior detection of the kick situation is critical to prevent any such catastrophic event. Currently, a kick situation is predicted or detected observing the properties of returned drilling mud from the wellbore. This method is not reliable as well as time consuming. The objective of this study is to develop a tool that will enable the prediction and detection of kick situations in managed pressure drilling (MPD). To achieve this goal, a two-phase experiment is conducted in 7.62 cm and 5 m long vertical pipe section. Instead of periodic sampling for kick situations, the newly developed tool enables the continuous monitoring of kick situations.