Effect of different failure criteria on sand onset prediction

Sand production is an important challenge in upstream oil and gas industry, causes operational andsafety problems and costs producers tens billons of dollar annually.Selection of appropriate failure criteria is necessary for any sand prediction study. Two dimensions ( 2D)failure criteria are used in literature like Mohr-Coulomb failure criteria and Hoek-Brown failure criteria. Mohr-Coulomb is most commonly applied failure criterion in sanding onset prediction. As this criterion does not consider the effect of intermediate principal stress, they are conservative in sanding onset prediction. %D failure criteria like Modified Lade and Drucker-Prager failure criteria which consider effect of intermediate effective principal stress have recently use in sanding onset potential prediction. The aim of this study is comparing of different failure criteria in sanding onset prediction that shows 3D failure criteria are less conservative than other D failure criteria. Also effect of depletion considered that reveals sanding potential increase with depletion.

Keywords:

failure criteria , sand onset potential , maximum sand free drawdown , in situ stresses , rock strength