Design Principles Behind the Construction of an Autonomous Laboratory-Scale Drilling Rig

Abstract

In recent years, hot topics such as digitalization, machine learning, digital twin and big data have evolved from being envisions on the paper to state of art solutions, expected to revolutionize drilling efficiency in the industry. Drilling automation tomorrow is all about exploiting the current state of technologies available to the entire operation of drilling a well. Not only can drilling automation limit costs and reduce the risk to rig personnel and the environment, but they also give access to locations of considerable potential that previously have been regarded unsafe or uneconomical to operate in. There are however some challenges in keeping up with the ever-increasing pace of the development. For one, testing of novel and innovative solutions is often very expensive because of non-productive rig time during implementation, trial runs and data evaluation. Also, the modern technologies require extensive R&D before on-site testing can even commence. While on land-rigs, some of these costs and risks can be greatly minimized, many offshore solutions lack that luxury. This paper presents an overview of the design principles that go into the construction of a fully autonomous laboratory-scale drilling rig at the University of Stavanger. It aims at describing 1) the engineering principles involved to resemble full-scale drilling operations on the laboratory scale, 2) design considerations and components, 3) component requirements for the rig, 4) control system algorithms for real-time optimization of drilling parameters and detection and handling of drilling anomalies, 5) development of drilling models (drill string dynamics, bit-vibration, etc.) and 6) benefits and future work with the laboratory-scale system. Some of the concepts that are presented in this paper have yet to be implemented during 2018.