Bifurcation and chaos in drillstring dynamics (Q2365799)

This paper contains an extensive discussion of the lateral vibrations of a stabilized drillstring as is used in drilling oil wells. The mathematical model leads to a system of two coupled second order ordinary differential equations with periodic forcing terms; using a rotating frame this system is turned into a four-dimensional autonomous system of first order. The main parameters which are taken explicitly into account are the drilling frequency, the mass eccentricity of the drillstring, the bearing clearance between stabilizers and borehole wall, fluid damping, and the Coulomb friction between stabilizer and wall. The friction term is nonsmooth at points of contact between stabilizer and wall. Without damping and friction the system is Hamiltonian but not integrable, showing the typical bands of chaotic motion alternating with island chains of regular motion. Adding damping one finds that for clearances less than the mass eccentricity synchronous forward whirl dominates the asymptotic motion, while for clearances larger than the mass eccentricity whirl is no longer possible and one observes (in the rotating frame) several types of limit cycles, each of them undergoing a period-doubling cascade when the drilling frequency is lowered. These cascades end in a chaotic regime, with a strange attractor showing (according to some numerical calculations) a considerable discrepancy between its correlation dimension at one side and its Hausdorff dimension at the other side; this indicates that different part of the attractor are visited in a rather inhomogeneous way by typical orbits. Lowering the damping results in a behaviour which is reminiscent of the Hamiltonian situation. In the last part of the paper the author studies the influence of the friction. As a result of this friction the stationary solutions (always in the rotating frame) corresponding to forward whirl can undergo Hopf bifurcation; that is, the forward whirl becomes unstable at certain driving frequencies and gives rise to nonsynchronous selfexcited oscillations of large amplitude. One of the important possibilities which appear in this regime is a transition from forward to backward drillstring motion; in the application on the field this may represent a serious threat to the assembly since it involves strongly fluctuating bending moments, which may cause connection fatigue.