Focus Areas
RAPID emphasizes research in five major, highly coupled categories: (i) sensors and measurements; (ii) data analytics; (iii) robotics (iv) modeling, digital twinning and controls; and (v) sustainability
- Sensors and measurements are fundamental to the improvement of any process, and well construction is no different. While there have been tremendous improvements in sensor technology over the last two decades, a lot of the sensor technology used in the field today are still outdated and output unreliable and bad quality data. There is a need to detect and prevent slow/sudden process degradations as well as sensor and equipment failures, for efficient well construction. This research thread addresses the development, prototyping and field trials of sensors and measurement systems that automate the collection of good quality data and facilitate automation and safety.
- Data analytics is a necessary area of research to (i) leverage the extensive and already available plethora of data collected on rigs today that is woefully underutilized; (ii) develop the algorithms necessary to leverage this data or determine what data is actually needed, and (iii) ensure that the developed algorithms are scalable, transferable and get the right information to the right location in the required timeframe for it to be useful. There is a persistent need for value adding analytics that can be applied on streaming data in order to extract key information or assert reliable action recommendations. This research thread addresses the development of such algorithms.
- Robotics. As confidence in the drilling control and data analytics increase, the motivation to move operators out of remote and hazardous environments to safer operational command centers increase. Thus, a key element to the meet consortium’s goals are the mechanization, intelligent automation and re-design of rigs to drill with fewer or no workers on site. Many of capabilities necessary to ensure multiple automated devices can work in a shared workspace exist in other industry, but there are significant research and engineering challenges to port these capabilities to the oil and gas industry given the high level of task uncertainty and unpredictable environments. Challenges faced by the oil industry in automation have been addressed in other domains (space, nuclear, etc.) that have similar challenges. These include collision checking, sharing workspaces (with operators or other mechanized systems, operator interfaces, task scheduling, 3D mapping, trajectory planning, tele-operation, and system integration. Researchers at UT Austin will look to adopt existing technologies whenever possible to minimize risk and shorten the path to deployment.
- Modeling is the unifying and foundational effort for well construction automation. Any efforts in this area will be driven by the needs to improve control, data analytics, or mechanization efforts. While efforts in this category are essential, efforts will only be undertaken to support the other research threads, thus ensuring the consortium research efforts are enabling useful technologies and not merely better models. If model development is motivated by technologies, then there must be an inherent discipline to ensure the models are experimentally verified. An automated drilling control system must equal the performance of operators on modern systems and ideally achieves the best possible drilling performance in the presence of constraints and uncertainties. This motivates our decision to include research into real-time optimization-based drilling control, which incorporates constraints and models of uncertainties into its decision making directly.
- Sustainability is a major research thread within the consortium and is growing in importance year over year. Geothermal “Anywhere” is a concept that is pursued by the consortium and requires the development of wells that are deeper, longer and drilled in higher temperature harder rock formations than previously drilled. This requires new sensors, new drilling processes, new technology etc., and leverages all four topics mentioned above.
Areas of Interest and Activity
Areas of interest and activity include – but are not limited to – the following topics. They are categorized below per the five focus areas discussed above. The input and advice of consortium members will be the primary influence on research topics, scope, and objectives.
(i) Sensors and Measurements
- Automated rheology and mud check
- Cuttings transport sensor
- Condition based maintenance of top drives and mud pumps
- High pressure flow and density sensor
(ii) Data Analytics
- Downhole mud motor failure prevention
- Bit pull criterion development
- Real-time pore pressure-frac gradient prediction
- Optimization of drillpipe connections operations
- Bit image analysis and forensics from 2D Photos
- kick and loss detection
- Storyboarding / spider bot
- Frac hits analysis
- High frequency data analysis
- Memo to activity code conversion using NLP
- Custom data studies for members
(iii) Robotics
- Remote system operations
- Unmanned aerial vehicles
- Situational awareness
- Supervisory automation controller design
(iv) Modeling Digital Twinning & Controls
- Advanced multi-phase hydraulics modeling
- Downhole heat management modeling
- Cuttings transport / hole cleaning modeling
- Cement flow modeling
- Digital twinning – generalized decision-making framework
- Managed pressure drilling (MPD) automation
- Drillstring dynamics
- Tortuosity / wellbore quality index
- Directional drilling optimization
- Geosteering automation
- Friction reduction advisory while sliding
- Self-learning auto-driller
(v) Sustainability
- Heat / temperature management in geothermal (GT) wells
- MPD Application in GT Wells
- Drilling Optimization in GT Wells
- GT data analytics (with focus on geothermal wells)
