Self-Excited Oscillations in Nonlinear Dynamical Systems with Application to Drillstring Systems

Author: Remco Leine

This research work attempts to explain the complicated behavior of oilwell drillstring motion when both torsional stick-slip and lateral whirl vibration are involved. It is demonstrated that the observed phenomena in experimental drillstring data could be due to the fluid forces of the drilling mud. A Stick-slip Whirl Model is presented which consists of a submodel for the whirling motion and a submodel for the stick-slip motion, both as simple as possible. The Stick-slip Whirl Model is a simplification of a drillstring confined in a borehole wall with drilling mud. The model is as simple as possible to expose only the basic phenomena but is discontinuous. Bifurcation diagrams of this discontinuous model for varying rotation speeds reveal discontinuous bifurcations. The disappearance of stickslip vibration when whirl vibration appears is explained by bifurcation theory. The numerical results are compared with the experimental data from a full-scale drilling rig.