Modelling of Fluid Flow and Cuttings Transport in Horizontal Narrow Annulus

The motivation for this research originated from the little understanding on the
phenomenon of cuttings and liquid flow in narrow horizontal wellbore. The study was
aimed at modelling single-phase yield power law (YPL) fluid flow and two-phase
(cuttings-water, cuttings-power law, and cuttings-YPL) flow through narrow horizontal
annulus. The effects of drillpipe rotation speed, eccentricity, diameter ratio, and fluid
rheological properties were investigated on the flow velocity and viscosity profile
distributions, annular pressure losses, and cuttings concentration. The modelling was
performed using a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software, ANSYS CFX-14.
The slot approximation technique was adopted to formulate a new approximate pressure
loss model for YPL fluid with drillpipe rotation. The Buckingham-