Computational study on drilling mud flow through wellbore annulus by Giesekus viscoelastic model

Cuttings transport from wellbore annulus to the surface via drilling fluids is one of the most important problems in gas and oil industries. In the present paper, the effects of viscoelastic property of drilling fluids on flow through wellbore annulus are studied numerically by use of computational fluid dynamics simulation in OpenFOAM software. This problem is simulated as the flow between two coaxial annulus cylinders and the inner cylinder is rotating through its axes. Here, the Giesekus model is used as the nonlinear constitutive equation. This model brings the nonlinear viscosity, normal stress differences, extensional viscosity and elastic property. The numerical solution is obtained using the second order finite volume method by considering PISO algorithm for pressure correction. The effect of elasticity, Reynolds number, Taylor number and mobility factor on the velocity and stress fields, pressure drop, and important coefficient of drilling mud flow is studied in detail. The results predicted that increasing elastic property of drilling mud lead to an initial sharp drop in the axial pressure gradient as well as Darcy-Weisbach friction coefficient. Increasing the Reynolds number at constant Taylor number, resulted an enhancing in the axial pressure drop of the fluid but Darcy-Weisbach ( f ) friction coefficient mainly reduced.