A Critical Review of Sanding Criteria in Sand Production Analysis for Petroleum Production and Injection Wells under Monotonic and Cyclic Loadings

Sand production cannot take place from intact sandstone regardless of the intensity of the bond between sand grains since the fluid flow cannot provide enough force to detach sand particles from the rock structure. This means the cementation between sand grains in the neighborhood of the producing tunnels (cased hole completion) or around wellbore walls (open hole completion) must first disappear. Moreover, operational conditions of the well also have to provide sufficient seepage force for displacing sand particles. The destruction of the cementation is caused by the effective stresses around the perforations or wellbore walls depending on field in-situ stresses, reservoir pore pressure, and geometry of the producing cavities. Completion strategy and production development plan for wells of a given reservoir can be optimized by predicting the locations and conditions that lead to the onset of sand production. Sand production (sanding) materializes in three stages: a) failure or full degradation of the rocks around the cavity, b) separation of the sand particles from the failed rock structure, and c) transport of the detached particles into the wellbore by drag forces. Shear failure, tensile failure, critical pressure drawdown, and erosion-based criteria are the most famous sanding criteria in numerical models of sand production. These sanding criteria along with conditions leading to failure of sandstone around petroleum wells due to applied cyclic loads are reviewed in detail, and the research findings are concluded in the end.

Keywords:

Sand production (sanding) criteria , Shear failure , Tensile failure , critical pressure drawdown , Erosion-based criteria