Investigate Proppant Transport with Varying Perforation Density and its Impact on Proppant Dune Development Inside Hydraulic Fractures

Proppant transport adequately during hydraulic fracturing treatment assumes same perforation contribution through multi-perforation system. Proppant transport performance into the different ordination fracture system using multi-entry perforation technique is still not fully understood. This experimental study was aimed to deeply investigate five factors that affect proppant transport performance: number of perforations, perforation opening size, shear rate, fracture orientation, and proppant size distribution. The impact of these factors on proppant transport performance from different perspective was studied. Fracture slot model was designed and built to observe easily the effects of perforation density and fracture orientation. The results of this experimental work show that limited-entry perforation technique has significant impact on proppant transport within fractures where single top perforation had better proppant placement than multi-perforation system. Fracture area was approximately propped with 66% and 48% using top perforation and multi-perforation system, respectively. Slurry with high shear rate has a negative effect on the proppant equilibrium dune level (EDL) and fracture propped area (FPA). Fracturing treatment using high shear rate causes high pressure drop in the fracture that leads to decreasing EDL by 17% and fracture propped area by 23% comparing to using low shear rate. Using large proppant size (20/40) leads to form high EDL and FPA compared to 100 mesh size. Proppant transport dominated by four mechanisms and the vertexes near wellbore plays main mechanism to carry proppant farther inside the fracture.