Data-Driven PHM Solution for Health Monitoring of Mud Motor Power Sections While Drilling
Abstract Mud motors are widely used for directional and performance drilling. Due to the extremely challenging operating conditions, they are prone to failures, resulting in unnecessary maintenance repair costs as well as unpredictable and very costly drilling failure. Until now, the oil and gas industry has lacked reliable procedures to monitor and maintain the health of the mud motor power sections. Recently, we systematically addressed this problem with an industry unique prognostic health management solution, which not only tracks remaining useful life (RUL), but also creates a new failure prevention scheme for operators. The key objective of this solution is to reduce maintenance costs and improve mud motor fleet reliability. It's based on a high-fidelity model and uses a hybrid approach by combining a high-fidelity physics-based model of a power section and data-driven approaches with machine learning techniques for real-time applications. The new methodology was tested in the field with great success. The verification of the created solution was completed based on numerous field data from Saudi Arabia and Argentina. Comparison of the predicted mud motor fatigue values with the actual observed post-job conditions and job failures demonstrated high fidelity of the developed models. The whole solution is currently being integrated into a drilling platform including the maintenance system, the well construction planning, and the execution. The first application of the workflow was deployed in the field in Colombia targeting reduction of maintenance cost and failure avoidance. The result was outstanding, with the initial deployment bringing about 27% of projected yearly maintenance savings and 10% of projected yearly failure reduction. It enables using the equipment to the full extent with increased drilling performance without sacrificing reliability. In addition, it optimizes the entire fleet management with reduced cost of logistics and maintenance. The findings of this paper demonstrate the value of the mud motor PHM solution for the oil and gas industry by providing accurate prognosis of power section health, leading to reduced costs, minimized NPT, and increased operational reliability.