In oil and gas industry, rotary drilling systems are used for energy exploration and productions. These types of systems are composed of two main parts: mechanical and electrical parts. The electrical part is represented by rotating motor called top drive; however, the mechanical part of the system is composed of tool string with many pipes, at the bottom end of these pipes the bit is attached to cut the rock during their contact. Since the bit is in a direct contact with rock characteristic variations, it can be under risk for heavy damage. The latter is principally caused by the fact that the rock–bit interaction term is highly nonlinear and unpredictable. In literature, many mathematical models have been proposed for rock–bit interaction, but they do not reflect the dynamic of the bit under vibrations since torsional and axial vibrations are strongly coupled and synchronized with it. In industrial development, the design of drill bit has faced many improvements in order to overcome these vibrations and mitigate unpredictable phenomena. Even though, the practical use of these drill bits confirmed that there are still many failures and damages for the new designs; moreover, bits’ virtual life become shorter than before. The objective of this study is to analyze the drill bit deformations caused by the stick-slip vibration phenomenon which is characterized by high-frequency high-amplitude in rotary drilling systems. The obtained results were validated through a case study of MWD (measurement while drilling) data of well located in a Southern Algerian oil field.

Hydrocarbon exploration and production activities are guaranteed through various operations including the drilling process, which is realized by using rotary drilling systems. The process involves crushing the rock by rotating the drill bit along a drill string to create a borehole. However, during this operation, violent vibrations can occur at the level of the drill string due to its random interaction with the rocks. According to their axes of occurrence, there are three types of vibrations: axial, lateral, and torsional, where the relentless status of the torsional vibrations is terminologically known as the stick-slip phenomenon. Such a phenomenon can lead to increased fatigue of the drill string and cause its abortive fracture, in addition to reducing the efficiency of the drilling process and consequently making the exploration and production operations relatively expensive. Thus, the main objective of this paper is to eliminate the severe stick-slip vibrations that appear along the drill string of the rotary drilling system according to the LQG observer-based controller approach. The rock–bit interaction term is highly nonlinear, and the bit rotational velocity is unmeasurable; an observer was first designed to estimate the unknown inputs of the model, and then the controller was implemented in the drill string model with 10 degrees of freedom. The estimation process was essentially based on surface measurements, namely, the current and rotational velocity of the top drive. Thereafter, the performance of the proposed observer-based LQG controller was tested for different simulation scenarios in a SimScape/Matlab environment, for which the controller demonstrated good robustness in suppressing the severe stick-slip vibrations. Furthermore, the simulation and experimental results were compared to other controllers designed for the same model; the proposed observer-based LQG controller showed better performance, and it was less sensitive to structured disturbances than H∞. Thence, it is highly recommended to use the proposed approach in smart rotary drilling systems.

The drilling process is among the most crucial steps in exploration and production activities in the petroleum industry. It consists of using mechanical mechanisms to crush rocks by the drill bit to pass through the different geological layers. The drill-string continuously transforms the rotational movement from the top drive motor to the drill bit through the drill pipes. Due to the strong interactions with the rocks, aggressive vibrations can arise in the drill-string in its three dimensions, and consequently, this may create three types of synchronous vibrations: axial, lateral, and torsional. The severe status of the latter is known as the stick-slip phenomenon, and is the most common in rotary drilling systems. Based on field observations, it has been inferred that the high frequency stick-slip vibrations may lead to drill-string fatigues and even to premature rupture. In the best case, it reduces the drilling efficiency by decreasing the rate of penetration, due to which the drilling operations become proportionally expensive. The main novelties of this research work are the design of an H∞ observer-based controller to mitigate the high frequency stick-slip vibrations, and the quantitative analysis of the vibrations’ severity for ten degrees of freedom model. The observer is designed to estimate the non-measurable rotational velocity of the drill bit due to the severity of the vibrations, while the controller is dedicated to suppressing the vibrations by using the top drive inputs. Thus, many scenarios have been considered to test and analyze the observer performance and the controller robustness. Furthermore, a comparison with the LQG observer-based controller has been conducted, where H∞ has demonstrated better efficiency in suppressing the stick-slip vibrations under unstructured perturbations.

The main objective of this paper is the development of overlapping decomposition strategy for controller design of rotary drilling systems based on the state feedback technique. The lamped model of the system has been considered, Graph-based representation has been used to rearrange the states of the model, and then a new model has been decomposed into subsystems after analyzing the interconnection terms. The expansion–contraction principle, combined with Lyapunov theory, is used to investigate the global stability of the decomposed system so that controllability of the designed controller is guaranteed and its robustness is improved. Moreover, the designed strategy has been validated with high-frequency mode stick-slip vibrations data measured in an operational rotary drilling system of an exploration well drilled in an Algerian hydrocarbon field.

Purpose: The drill string vibrations can create harmful effects on drilling performance because they generate the stick-slip phenomenon which reduces the quality of drilling and decreases the penetration rate and may affect the robustness of the designed controller. For this reason, it is necessary to carefully test the different rock-bit contact models and analyze their influences on system stability in order to mitigate the vibrations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of rock-bit interaction on high-frequency stick-slip vibration severity in rotary drilling systems.Design/methodology/approach: The main objective of this study is an overview of the influence of the rock-bit interaction models on the bit dynamics. A total of three models have been considered, and the drilling parameters have been varied in order to study the reliability of the models. Moreover, a comparison between these models has allowed the determination of the most reliable function for stick-slip phenomenon.Findings: The torsional model with three degrees of freedom has been considered in order to highlight the effectiveness of the comparative study. Based on the obtained results, it has been concluded that the rock-bit interaction model has big influences on the response of the rotary drilling system. Therefore, it is recommended to consider the results of this study in order to design and implement a robust control system to mitigate harmful vibrations; the practical implementation of this model can be advantageous in designing a smart rotary drilling system.Originality/value: Many rock-bit functions have been proposed in the literature, but no study has been dedicated to compare them; this is the main contribution of this study. Moreover, a case study of harmonic torsional vibrations analysis has been carried out in well-A, which is located in an Algerian hydrocarbons field, the indices of vibrations detection are given with their preventions.