Improved Kick and Loss Detection and Attenuation in Managed Pressure Drilling by Utilizing Wired Drill Pipe

A model based method for kick and loss detection and attenuation in Managed Pressure Drilling is presented. The drilling system is modeled as a distributed parameter system combined with a reservoir flow equation containing reservoir pressure and the so-called productivity index as uncertain parameters. A swapping-based design for state and parameter estimation utilizing bottom-hole pressure measurements available via wired drill pipe is combined with a closed loop controller for kick and loss attenuation. The performance of the proposed method is compared to earlier results on kick attenuation in a simulation, showing significant improvement. © 2018, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd.