Study on the law and mechanism of particle migration in high pressure pumping pipeline

Abstract

When the pipe manifold, blowout preventer stacks, etc. in the high pressure and large displacement conditions, their key sealing components are very susceptible to erosion failure. Therefore, temporary plugging by pumping plugging particles to the failure site has been proposed in the engineering site. However, in practical applications, it is found that plugging particles often clog or settle in the pumping pipeline. It’s necessary to study the transportation law and mechanism of particles in high pressure pumping pipeline. In this paper, a particle pumping model is established based on the CFD-DEM coupling method, and the accuracy of the model is verified by the experimental data in the literature. Then, the model is used to analyze the migration law of particles under the influence factors of particle size, particle concentration, particle shape and pump injection displacement. The results show that the particles in the pumping pipeline have three states: smooth flow, accumulation, and clogging, and the accumulation or clogging of particles occurs in the variable diameter part of the pipeline. With the increase of particle concentration, the critical size of accumulation decreases continuously, and the critical size of clogging decreases first and then tends to be stable. The pumping displacement mainly affects the volume distribution of particles on the vertical section of the pumping pipeline. The main factors affecting the transportation of particles are the force chain formed between particles and the collision frequency between particles. This study fills the gap regarding the lack of research related to large-sized particles transportation in high-pressure, high-displacement pumping pipeline, and provides theoretical support for the selection of process parameters during particle pumping.