Drilling - Equipment, Methods and Materials - Stresses Around Wellbores in Nonlinear Rock

The, state of stress around a vertical wellbore in rock following nonlinear stress-strain laws is examined by means of finite element analysis. The wellbore, is considered an axisymmetrier body with axisymmetric loading. The initial vertcal and borizontal stresses are "locked" in the rock elements around the wellbore and a new state of stress is generated by the displacements which occur around the borehole. A point-uise variation of the elastic moduli is made on the basis of the new stress state and the triaxial data. The initial stresses tire now reintroduced along with tile changed moduli and original boundary constraints. This procedure is repeatrd until convergent stresses are reached. The effect of nonlinearity on streases is examined for a 6,000-ft wellbore in a scbistose gnezss and Berea sandstone using results of laborratory triaxial compression tests. The results sbou that the effect is restrited to one well radius from the bottom periphery of the bole. Beyond a distance of one-quarter radius, the elfect of nonlinearity on stresscs IS almost always less than percent for the cases conszdered, The consideration of a static pressure inside the well does not magnify the effect of monlinearity on borehole stresscs. INTRODUCTION The terms " wellbore" and "borehole" here designate cylindrical openings in the ground with vertical axis and a circular cross-section. A knowledge of the stress redistribution that occurs on excavating a wellbore is important in understanding (1) the behavior of the lined or unlined hole, (2) hydraulic fracture response, and (3) the effect of stress redistribution on drillability; also it is important in predicting initial stresses in the virgin ground, and in analyzing the response of measuring instruments placed in the borehole. Our knowledge of the state of stress around a wellbore has been restricted to homogeneous, isotropic, elastic material and derives chiefly from the analysis by Miles and Toppingl and the photoelastic work of Galle and Wilhoit2 and Word and Wilhoit.3 In this investigation the state of stress is examined for a nonlinear elastic material by means of finite element analysis. Many rocks possess stress-strain curves that depart notably from straight lines in their initial or final portions. While the literature contains abundant stress-strain data from triaxial tests (axisymmetric loading) on cylindrical rock specimens, there is little information on rock deformability under nonaxisymmetric loading conditions such as occur at each point around the bottom of a wellbore. Although there is some knowledge of the effect of intermediate principal stress on rock strength, there is virtually nothing known about its effect on rock deformability; therefore, we have assumed here that the effect of intermediate principal stress can be ignored. A schistose gneiss4 and Berea sandstone5 were selected as representative rocks for this analysis. The traditional graphs of deviator stress (ol -o3) vs axial strain were reworked to give the tangent modulus as a function of the deviator stress for varying values of the minor principal stress. The result is a nesting family of skewed, bell-shaped curves for tile gneiss (Fig. 1A) and the sandstone (Fig. 2A). A similar replotting of the lateral strain data defines the variation of Poisson's ratio (v) with the deviator stress and confining pressure. These curves, shown in Fig. 1B for the gneiss and in Fig. 2B for the sandstone, are not so well ordered as the tangent modulus curves. However, all of these display an increase of v with deviator stress application, but the rate of increase diminishes with confinement. The ET and v curves for the two rock types are tabulated in Tables 1A and 1A for use in a digital computer so that material properties corresponding to a given state of stress can be assigned by interpolation. STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Given a state of stress in the ground prior to drilling a hole (initial stresses), we assume that