Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218 –225

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/petrol

Structural optimization of downhole fracturing tool using turbulent flow CFD

simulation
n
Chao Zheng, Yonghong Liu , Hanxiang Wang, Hengyu Zhu, Zengkai Liu, Renjie Ji, Yang Shen

College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Qingdao 266580, China

article info abstract

Article history: Hydraulic fracturing treatment has been widely applied to simulate oil and gas reservoirs. Ball seat is the most important
Received 13 March 2015 component in the ball and seat multistage fracturing system. This work aims to study the proppant-carrying fluid two-phase
Received in revised form
flow and optimize the outlet structure of ball seat. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) with standard k- ε turbulence model
9 May 2015
and particle trajectory model is used to si-mulate the internal flow when fracturing fluid flows across the ball seat. The
Accepted 4 June 2015 Available
online 20 June 2015 influence of outlet structure on velocity streamlines, pressure drop, proppant trajectories, proppant concentration and erosion
rate are investigated. Compared with the original structure, it is found that the optimized outlet structure with smooth curve
Keywords: can improve the flow status significantly. On-site fracturing experiments have been conducted to validate the CFD study results
Hydraulic fracturing
in a well of Sheng li Oilfield. The experimental results confirm that the optimized outlet structure contributes to lower pressure
Ball seat
drop and better erosion re-sistance. Based on comprehensive analyses, it can be summarized that a general agreement between
Pressure drop
the numerical simulation and on-site fracturing experiments is obtained. Besides, the obtained results in-dicate that the CFD
Erosion rate
Numerical simulation approach combining with experimental approach can be an effective method for the design of ball seat and other downhole
Experimental approach fracturing tools.

& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
As an important technique for creating cracks in rocks, hy-draulic
fracturing technology has been widely used to explore unconventional oil and
gas reservoirs such as shale gas, shale oil which are trapped in the rock pores
(Rutqvist et al., 2013; Hossain and Rahman, 2008). To improve the
production rate, the fracturing fluid containing water, proppant and special
chemicals are in-jected in reservoirs to improve permeability (Mahrer, 1999).
To fulfill fracturing process, ball and seat system is designed and applied in
the multistage fracturing process. The flow status of fracturing fluid is
significantly influenced by the tool geometry. Furthermore, the flow status is
also affected by many factors such as fluid viscosity, flow rate, proppant size,
proppant shape and density. The flow status will impact the movement and
distribu-tion of proppant within fracturing tools.
Erosion phenomenon which represents a form of material wear and loss
has been reported in many areas of oil and gas production (Parsi et al., 2014;
Wong et al., 2012). Severe erosion occurred during the fracturing process is
undesirable because it will lead to
n Corresponding author. Fax: þ86 0532 86983300.
E-mail address: liuyhupc@163.com (Y. Liu).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.petrol.2015.06.006
0920-4105/& 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
increase of production time and cost (Clem et al., 2006). For ex-ample, Fig. 1
shows the erosion status of sliding sleeve mated with the original ball seat. As
can be seen in the figure, the inner sur-faces of sliding sleeve suffer severe
erosion. To fulfill the fracturing operation, the whole sires of fracturing tool
were removed out of the wellbore and replaced, then put down again.
Moreover, the extra increase of operation cost and unexpected extra risk may
occur during the replacement process.
Fig. 2 shows the original ball seat after on-site experiment. The damage of
ball seat outlet resulted from proppant impingement. Ball seat and fracturing
sliding sleeve which can open the channel between the casing and target
formation are key components in fracturing system. Thus, it is urgent to
decrease the erosion rate of ball seat and fracturing sliding sleeve.
Downhole flow details and erosion problem can be performed by using
computational fluid dynamics (Jafari et al., 2014; Zhu et al., 2012). Tsai et al.
(2012) shown advances in the numerical simulation of particle transport in
hydraulically stimulated frac-tures for oil and gas production. In their study,
the flow and par-ticle interaction were accounted for by a commercial
Eulerian– Lagrangian CFD code. Benaissa et al. (2012) conducted a CFD si-
mulation with enhanced turbulence model and near wall treat-ment to predict
initial erosion caused by water–clay mixtures flow
through a cylindrical
pipe. The obtained results enabled predicting
 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225 219

Fig. 1. Failure of sliding sleeve used with original ball seat.

ball seat geometry on the velocity streamlines, proppant trajec-tories, pressure

drop, and erosion rate are presented. Finally, conclusions are given in Section
5.

2. Basic principle and theory

2.1. Design principle of ball and seat

Fig. 2. Failure of original ball seat caused by severe erosion at the outlet.
erosion and allowed for understanding the irregular eroded wall shape. Arefi
et al. (2005) developed a code named “erosion si-mulator” for transient
simulation of the erosion of any 2D tool geometry. Their results offered some
advices for minimizing the erosion of drilling tool. Deshpande et al. presented
a methodology which combined CFD and theoretical approaches to calculate
split flow rate and pressure drop of fracturing fluid in a multiple sliding sleeve
system. Their method can be useful in designing a sliding sleeve (Deshpande
et al., 2012). Rosine et al. used computational fluid dynamics software to
provide greater insight into actual coiled tubing flow patterns, including fluid
flow velocity profiles, secondary flow regimes and erosion phenomenon. Their
re-searches indicated that CFD had been proved to be an effective alternative
to the full-scale testing (Rosine et al., 2008). Based on these studies, the CFD
simulation methods are widely used in oil and gas industry. These above
literatures also have shown that the flow status can be improved obviously
after structural optimiza-tion. However, limited work has been paid to study
the ball and seat system among their studies. And, how the presence of ball
seat impacts the internal flow of fracturing tool has not been un-derstood
clearly. Thus, it is necessary to study the downhole ball and seat system.
Fig. 3 shows the schematic diagram of ball and seat system, which mainly
includes pins, ball, ball seat and sliding sleeve. Fig. 3
(a) shows that the ball seat is locked by pins and the sliding sleeve is in the
closed position. Fig. 3(b) shows the ball lands on the ball seat, and hydraulic
pressure behind the ball causes the pins to shear, thereby shifting the sliding
sleeve to the open position. In the open position, fracturing fluid flows through
ports of sliding sleeve and is pumped into formation. The shape change of ball
seat will lead to severe turbulence in the fracturing tool if the ball seat
exceeds certain degree of erosion during the injection of the proppant slurry.
2.2. Turbulence model
During fracturing process, fracturing fluid with high flow rate, high
pressure and high proppant ratio is pumped to wellbore (Yu et al., 2015).
Flow status of fracturing fluid can be divided into laminar flow and turbulent
flow based on different Reynolds number. Under the actual working
3 3
conditions, the flow rate ranges from 1 m /min to 5 m /min. The Reynolds
3
number gained under the flow rate of 1 m /min is 27,142, which means that
the flow which takes place within the tool is turbulent. Various turbulence

In this paper, computational fluid dynamics with standard k-ε turbulence

model and particle trajectory model is built to simulate the flow status and
movement of proppant. Based on simulation results, the outlet structure of
ball seat is redesigned. Moreover, on-site fracturing experiments are
conducted to validate optimi-zation results. It is found that experimental
results are consistent with that of numerical simulations. This indicates that
CFD ap-proach combining with experimental approach can minimize erosion
rate by optimizing the outlet structure of ball seat.

The remainder of this work is organized as follows. In Section 2, the

principle of ball seat and the basic theory are described in detail. In Section 3,
the numerical simulation of flow domain is developed. In Section 4, the
effects of proppant concentration and Fig. 3. Schematic of the downhole ball and seat system.
220 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225

models have been proposed to govern and perform realistic flow studies. With
the development of computational fluid dynamics, improvements of the
→
(ρ p
− ρ
f )→
FG= g (7)
standard k-ε model such as RNG k-ε model and Realizable k-ε model have ρ
p
been proposed by many researchers (Yakhot and Orszag,1986). Nevertheless, →

the standard k-ε model is the most popular model in solving the turbulence
problem (Launder and Spalding, 1972). To reflect the influence of small scale
flow, additional terms are added into the standard k- ε model (Jones and
Launder, 1972). Due to the high velocity of carrying fluid flow, the standard k-
ε turbulence model is employed in this study and can be expressed as
follows:
∂k ∂ ηt ∂ui ∂ui
u ∂k
where mp is mass of sand particle, g is gravitational acceleration, CD is drag
force coefficient, ρ f is density of fluid, ρp is density of
→
sand particle, dp is diameter of sand particle, Vf is velocity of fluid,
→
Vp is velocity of sand particle, and ∇P is pressure gradient.
2.4. Erosion calculation model
∂u j
Particle erosion models were proposed to describe the solid particle

+ − ρε erosion mathematically by previous researchers. Edwards et al. (2000)

ρ ∂ =∂ σk xj + ηt xj xj xi (1)
∂
j xj xi η + ∂ ∂ ∂ procedure into a
implemented a comprehensive erosion prediction
2
ηt C1 ε ∂ ui ui ∂u j C
∂ε ∂ − ε commercial CFD code. In their work, the erosion rates can be
∂ε∂ + ηt + 2ρ
u
σε ∂xk k ∂x j ∂x j ∂xi k (2) calculated by equation as follows:
ρ k = η+
∂x k ∂x k Nparticles
( )
ṁp C d p f (α) Vp
b (Vp)

2 Rerosion = ∑ A face (8)

ηt = C μ ρ k /ε p= 1

aα 2 + bα α≤θ
where ρ is fluid density, μ is dynamic viscosity, k is turbulent ki-netic energy,
u is average velocity, ε is dissipation rate, and ηt is turbulent viscosity. f (α) = 2
2
Acos (α )sin(w α ) + B sin(α )+Cα>θ 9)
(
In the standard k-ε equation, these values following the origi-nal
where C(dp) is the function of the particle size, α is the impact angle of the
formulation are obtained through the data fitting for a wide range of flows by
previous researchers (Launder and Spalding, 1972). The values of coefficient between surface and particles, f( α) is the function associated with the impact
and constants are listed as follows: angle, Vp is the particle impact velocity, b(V p) is a function related to the
particle impact velocity, Aface is the area of calculation unit, ṁp is the mass
C1 ¼0.09, C2 ¼1.44, Cμ ¼1.92, sk ¼1.0, sε ¼1.3. flow rate of the parti-
2.3. Particle phase model cles in the calculation, Nparticles is the number of particles impact on the area
2
Aface, Rerosion is the erosion rate with the unit is kg/(m s), and A, B, C, w, a,
The flow condition within fracturing tool belongs to solid–li-quid two- b, and θ are the empirical constants for the material.
phase flow. In the Lagrangian approach, a large number of particles are
Values of C(dp) and b(Vp) for spherical particle eroding on car-bon steel
tracked through the fluid domain. The motion
→ are constants as follows: C(dp)¼1.8 10 9, b(Vp)¼2.6.
5 5
equation of a spherical particle mainly includes drag force ( FD ), For carbon steel, A ¼1.239 10 , B¼ 1.192 10 ,
→ → 5
C¼2.167 10 , w¼1, a¼ 3.34 10 4, 4
b¼1.79 10 , and
virtual mass force ( FV ), pressure gradient force ( FP ), gravity and
→ θ¼15º.
buoyancy force ( FG ) in the analysis (Morsi and Alexander, 1972;
Clift et al., 1978). The equation can be expressed as follows:
→ → →→→→
d Vp 3. Numerical simulation
mp dt =∑F = F D + F P + F V + FG (3)
3.1. Details of flow domain and calculation
The drag force is the most important force acting per unit particle mass,
defined as: Fluent CFD software is used to solve the numerical simulation in this
→ 2 →→ →→ study. Gambit acting as pre-processor is chose to mesh the flow domain due to
πdp
= ρ its excellent compatibility with Fluent. Ac-cording to the schematic diagram
FD CD f 8 V f − Vp (V f − Vp ) (4)
of ball and seat system as shown in Fig. 3, the flow domain is simplified and
When a particle passes through areas with high pressure gradient, the particle finally meshed after checking the mesh refinement sensitivity. The flow
will be affected by a force due to the pressure gradient. The pressure gradient domain is or-iented that the inlet is at the left extremity and the outlet is at the
right extremity. The origin of the coordinate is placed at the center of inlet
force can be written as:
surface. Fig. 4 shows the obtained mesh of flow domain. The dimension of
→ 31
ball seat is 88 mm in outer diameter and 46 mm in inner diameter. And, the
F P = − 2 ∇P (5) dimension of the computational do-main has been indicated in Fig. 4. In the
ρp
present study, the stan-dard SIMPLE algorithm is used in pressure–velocity
Virtual mass is another force that affects the motion of particle. Virtual coupling. To guarantee accuracy, the absolute convergence criterion for the
mass is the inertia added to a system when an accelerating or a decelerating 4
CFD simulations is set to 1 10 as well as the residual curve is monitored at
particle moves through some volume of fluid, can be expressed as:
outlet to ensure stable conditions are reached. The calculation work is
performed on a workstation (Dell Precision T5600) whose CPU is E5-2640
d → → with speed of 2.50 GHz.
→ 1ρf ( V f − Vp )
FV = 2 ρ dt (6)
p

Buoyancy force is the upward force caused by the floating ability of the 3.2. Boundary condition setting
carrying fluid and can be written with gravity as follows:
The boundary conditions must be set correctly to simulate
the
 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225
Fig. 4. Mesh of flow domain geometry using Gambit software.
Table 1
Numerical simulation conditions.
Parameter Value
Flow rate 1–5
Density of liquid 1100
Viscosity of liquid 100
Density of proppant 2100
Diameter of proppant 380
Proppant flow rate 10
flow details in the fracturing pipe accurately. The numerical si-mulation
conditions are given in Table 1. In addition, three dif-ferent boundary
conditions are imposed below.
Velocity-inlet: the boundary style at the left extremity of the domain is set
to velocity-inlet as shown in Fig. 4. The turbulence specification method with
turbulent intensity of 5% and the hy-draulic diameter equal to the radius of
inlet is selected in the option. According to different flow rates, different
velocities at the inlet can be calculated.
Pressure-outlet: the boundary style at the right extremity of the domain is
set to pressure-outlet as shown in Fig. 4. Due to the backflow phenomenon at
the outlet, turbulence specification method with backflow turbulent intensity
of 5% and backflow hydraulic diameter equal to the radius of outlet is used.
To gen-erate cracks in rock and formation, the downhole pressure which must
be kept high enough may reach up to 30 MPa or much higher.
Wall: the inner surface the ball seat of the sleeve is set to wall. It is the
place where the enhanced near wall treatment effects option is selected to
handle near wall calculation. In addition, no-slip boundary condition is
selected at the wall. Proppant will re-flect from the wall with velocity slowing
down after impingement. The kinetic energy loss leads to the material
removed from surface of fracturing tool. The restitution coefficient of
proppant is set to calculate the velocity change and kinetic energy loss.
3.3. Grid independency study
The computational domain has been meshed with structured grid.
Different grid number is created in order to examine the grid independency.
Results of grid independency are presented in Fig. 5. The figure shows several
velocity magnitude profiles along the radial direction on cross section of z
3 ball seat. The proppant concentration value on the inner surface of fracturing
¼0.25 m under flow rate of 1 m /min. The curves in Fig. 5 indicate that when
the number of grid is more than 475,000, the solution is essentially grid
independent.
4. Results and discussion
4.1. Characterizations of flow domain
Fig. 6 shows the velocity streamlines of flow domain with dif-ferent flow
rates. It can be observed that obvious recirculation
221
Unit
3
m /min
3
kg/m
mPa s
3
kg/m
mm
kg/s
Fig. 5. Grid independence study.
zones take place at the outlet of ball seat. The appearance of re-circulation
zones arise from the presence of ball seat. Vortex is easy to form at the
downstream of ball seat due to the sharp corner of outlet. Moreover, velocity
increases obviously with the increasing flow rate. The maximum velocity
resulting from the narrowing of flow domain locates at the channel of ball
seat.
Fig. 7 shows the trajectories of the proppant particles in flow domain. It
can be seen clearly from the figure, velocity streamlines impact the movement
of proppant significantly. Compared with the streamline of carrying fluid,
trajectories of proppant become much disorder. It is noticed that proppant
deviate from the streamline, finally impinge on the outlet of ball seat and the
inner surface of sliding sleeve. During the fracturing process, the im-
pingement causes erosion wear of these zones. Severe erosion will cause the
damage or even failure of fracturing tools.
For different flow rates, the pressure contours of flow domain are
simulated as shown in Fig. 8. It is easy to find that the pressure of fracturing
fluid drops when fluid flows across the ball seat. During the calculation, the
outlet pressure of flow domain is set to 30 MPa. The inlet pressure increases
3
from 30.2 MPa to 31.7 MPa, with the flow rate increasing from 1 m /min to 5
3
m /min. Thus, it can be summarized that the pressure drop value increases
with the increasing flow rate. Furthermore, low pressure zones are found at
the outlet of ball seat with the increasing flow rate. The explanation for the
appearance of the low pressure zones is that the movement of fracturing fluid
and proppant became more complex under lager flow rate.
For further investigation, the proppant concentration on the surface of
fracturing tool is presented in Fig. 9. Wall-1 is the outlet surface of ball seat
and Wall-2 is the inner surface of fracturing sliding sleeve. It can be seen that
the maximum proppant con-centration value locates on the outlet surface of
sliding sleeve is also large. It is because that the propant interacted with the
carrying fluid during the fracturing process. Furthermore, the recirculation
phenomenon occurred at the outlet of ball seat has significant influence on the
motion and distribution of prop-pant. Hence, the proppant concentration on
the wall changed with the change of flow rate and flow status. The larger
proppant concentration will increase the impingement probability, which lead
to more severe erosion of fracturing tool. Thus, severe erosion phenomenon is
inclined to appear at the outlet of ball seat and on the inner surface of
fracturing sliding sleeve.
222 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225

Fig. 6. Velocity streamlines of flow domain for different flow rates.

4.2. Optimization of outlet structure
As an important component, ball seat the presence of which impacts the
motion of proppant and carrying fluid is usually in-stalled within the sliding
sleeve. According to above analyses, the outlet structure of ball seat has
significant influence on the flow status. Aiming to investigate the influence of
outlet structure on the erosion rate of fracturing tool more clearly, the
optimization of outlet structure is studied below.
The outlet of ball seat before and after structural optimization
is depicted in Fig. 10. To improve the flow status, the sharp corner of outlet is
modified to a smooth curve by fitting the streamline of recirculation zone as
shown in Fig. 10. The smooth curve can de-crease the change gradient of
diameter. The gradually-varied shape of outlet helps to decrease the severe
turbulent flow in flow domain.
It is well known that pressure is an important indicator during fracturing
process. The formation cannot be fractured successfully without enough
pressure. Larger pressure drop will increase the load of high pressure pump,
which results in higher cost. The

Fig. 7. Trajectories of the proppant particles in the flow domain under flow rate of 3 m 3/min.
 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225 223

Fig. 8. Pressure contours of flow domain for different flow rates.

pressure drop behavior can be attributed to factors such as friction, geometry

change and presence of ball seat. Most fluids used in drilling and hydraulic
fracturing applications are non-Newtonian (Dosunmu and Shah, 2014). These
fluids display drag reducing characteristics which help to decrease pressure
drop behavior of fracturing fluid in the sliding sleeve. Fig. 11 shows the
comparison between pressure drop values obtained from original and
modified outlet structure. Obviously, the pressure drop behavior becomes
more severe with the increasing flow rate. Meanwhile, the varia-tion trends of
the curves for both the original and modified model are similar. Compared
with the original model, the modified outlet model can obtains about 40%
lower pressure drop, which indicates that the modified outlet model
contributes to better flow status.

To illustrate the importance of structural optimization, erosion rates of

fracturing tools were calculated and compared. Fig. 12 shows the comparison
of average erosion rate for original and modified structure model. With the
flow rate increasing, it is clear to see that both the erosion rate increase Fig. 10. The outlet of ball seat before and after structural optimization.
sharply. It is because that larger flow rate results in more severe impingement
between proppant and tool, which leads to higher erosion rate. In addition, the is improved by about 50% after the optimization of outlet struc-ture. The
erosion rate of original model is obviously higher than that of modified model comparison results imply that the smooth curve of outlet is good for the
under the same flow rate. The erosion resistance
internal flow. Therefore, it is proved that structural

3
Fig. 9. Proppant concentration on the surface of fracturing tool under flow rate of 3 m /min.
224 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225

Fig. 13. Schematic of the on-site fracturing experiment system.

Fig. 11. Comparison of pressure drop values between original and modified structure.

Table 2
On-site fracturing experiment conditions.

Parameter Value Unit

Flow rate 3.5 3

m /min
Density of fracturing fluid 1100 3
kg/m
Viscosity of fracturing fluid 100 mPa s
Density of proppant 2100 3
kg/m
Diameter of proppant 380 μm
Proppant flow rate 10 kg/s
Fracturing time 30 min

Fig. 12. Comparison of average erosion rates between original and modified structure.

optimization can improve the flow status and extend erosion life of fracturing
tools.

4.3. Validation of on-site fracturing experiment

To validate the CFD study results, on-site fracturing experi-ments were

conducted in a well located in Shengli Oilfield. In this study, the whole
fracturing system mainly contains fracturing pump truck, pipe, wellhead,
packer, ball seat and fracturing sliding sleeve as shown in Fig. 13. The packer
is a basic sealing device that isolates and restricts fracturing fluids and
pressures within the wellbore to protect other formations below and above the
frac-turing stage. The fracturing pump truck with maximum fracturing
3
pressure reaching 140 MPa and maximum flow rate reaching 3.75 m /min
was used in this experiment. The on-site fracturing experiment conditions are
given in Table 2.
Fig. 14. Image showing the outlet of modified ball seat: (a) before experiment and (b) after
experiment.
measuring machine was used to measure the parameters of ball seat after
experiment. Fig. 15 shows the measurement results of outlet before and after
experiments. It can be seen that the inner diameter of ball seat increases a bit
from 46.9 mm to 47.0 mm. The radius of the smooth curve also increases
from 15.0 mm to 16.2 mm, resulting from the material loss caused by
proppant impingement and friction.

Fig. 14 shows the morphology of modified ball seat before and after the
experiment. As can be seen in the figure, the morphology of outlet after
optimization changed only a little. The experiment results confirm that the
optimization of ball seat outlet can im-prove the flow status, resulting in better
erosion resistance.
To observe the accurate shape change, a three-coordinates
Besides, it is found that the maximum pump pressure needed for
fracturing decreased from 51.30 MPa to 47.06 MPa after struc-tural
optimization, which means that structural optimization de-creases the pressure
drop behavior during fracturing process. The optimized outlet structure
reduces the harmful flow such as vortex and backfl ow within the tools.
Fracturing tool failure caused by
 C. Zheng et al. / Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering 133 (2015) 218–225
Fig. 15. Three-coordinates measurement results of outlet: (a) before experiment and (b) after experiment.
severe erosion can be avoided during the fracturing of oil and gas reservoirs.
On the basis of the above analyses, it can be summarized that the
optimization of outlet structure can significantly improve the erosion
resistance of ball seat and other downhole tool accessories. At the same time,
a general agreement between the numerical simulation and on-site fracturing
experiment is obtained.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, the CFD approach was used to simulate the in-ternal flow of
fracturing fluid during the hydraulic fracturing of unconventional oil and gas
reservoirs. The influence of outlet structure on the flow status and erosion rate
was investigated. On-site fracturing experiments were conducted to validate
the CFD study results. Based on the above study, main conclusions can be
achieved below.
(1) The CFD simulation results show that vortex and backflow phenomenon
is easy to take place at the outlet domain due to the presence of ball seat.
The outlet structure of ball seat has significant influence on the flow status
of fracturing fluid.
(2) Pressure drop, proppant concentration and erosion rate in-crease
obviously with the increase of flow rate during frac-turing process. In
addition, pressure drop of fracturing fluid can be reduced by about 40%
after structural optimization. On the other hand, the average erosion rate
of fracturing tool can be decreased by about 50% through modifying the
sharp cor-ner to a smooth curve.
(3) On-site fracturing experiments confirm the CFD study results. The
original ball seat and sliding sleeve suffer severe from damage due to the
erosion wear. Whereas, the ball seat with smooth curve outlet structure
has better erosion resistance, which decreases the production risk and
cost caused by tool failure in oil and gas production. Therefore, the
erosion life of fracturing tools can be improved by structural
optimization.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge the finance supported by the
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities under Grant no.
15CX06060A, the Taishan Scholar project of Shandong Province under Grant
no. TS20110823, the National Research and Development Program of China
under Grant no. 2013AA09A220, the National Natural Science Foundation of
China under Grant no. 51205411 and the Innovation Project Foundation
225
of Graduate School of China University of Petroleum under Grant no.
YCX2015037.
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