Comparison of a novel finite element method for sucker rod pump downhole dynamometer card determination based on real world dynamometer cards

An advanced dynamic finite element model is presented that diagnoses the downhole pump performance of sucker rod pumping systems, applicable for any pumping conditions and equipment used. The results are compared to downhole measurements and other state of the art evaluation techniques.

Existing diagnostic tools exhibit specific limitations that reduce their applicability and output quality. This paper introduces a diagnostic tool, which can predict the rod string's stress field and its movement not only at the pump plunger but all along the rod string. Moreover, this tool can account for the interaction between rod guides and tubing as well as rod string and tubing. To this end, innovative tube-to-tube contact modeling is applied. The high precision results are accomplished by running a dynamic finite element simulation. The basic principle is to evaluate the plunger load incrementally by consecutively applying restarts of each time step, fully automated and computation time optimized.

This publication shows that both the plunger load and the rod string's dynamic behavior can be determined for any given wellbore as long as the borehole trajectory and surface dynamometer measurements are known. The dynamic finite element model is evaluated for a deviated system and a vertical system equipped with two different downhole pump types. Comparing the simulation results with the available downhole measurements shows an excellent match. The the proposed solution provides a considerable amount of details about the overall system's behavior. The evaluation has shown that the performance of standard and novel downhole pump types can be successfully diagnosed in detail, which is just possible under limitations with commercial software solutions..

The novelty of the shown technique is the consideration of the full 3D trajectory, the implementation of only physical properties of the equipment used, and a realistic setup. The validation of the model output with measured downhole data indicates an excellent accuracy of the shown model.