Sand Production in Unconsolidated Reservoirs based on CFD-DEM and Experimental Simulation

This thesis makes a significant contribution to the petroleum industry by presenting a comprehensive quantitative selection model for slotted liner and wire-wrapped sand screen, combining four approaches, including specially designed sand production experimental cell, computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method (CFD-DEM) numerical model, ASISGS software and multiply regression models. This selection model provides the engineers an accurate and fast approach to minimize the consequences of the “sand production” phenomenon and maximize the petroleum production rate, also discovering the underlying mechanism of sand production. Moreover, this novel 3-D two-way coupled CFD-DEM model can be used to simulate various fluid-particle two-phase systems.