Mechanical Properties of Filament Wound Composite Pipe for Well Completion Pup Joint Application

Composite materials have gained popularity in high-performance products that need to be lightweight, yet strong enough to take harsh loading conditions. Hence, oil and gas industry are increasingly turning to composite materials as solutions for not only corrosion problems, but also for weight reduction issues. This issue is also applied to pup joint application because superior strength to weight ratio is an important consideration in tubing material selection. This is particularly so as the quest for oil and gas moves towards more demanding conditions, such as deepwater exploration and production. Therefore, this project is aimed to study the feasibility for fiberglass polyester to replace conventional low alloy steel in pup joint (tubing) application. Glass Fiber Reinforced Polyester is chosen as the pup joint composite material in this project because it offers a number of advantages over the conventional material, such as lightweight, resistance to corrosion and lower fabrication cost. Apart from that, literature review is conducted and calculations are performed to predict the properties of the fiberglass polyester pipe before the pipe fabrication process using filament winding method. In addition, the mechanical properties like fiber volume fraction, hardness and tensile strength are determined using mechanical tests with reference to industrial recognized standards. Finally, the data analysis and discussion is done on the results taken and further improvements and recommendations are suggested.