Influence of the flow characteristics and mud physical properties on the Perfor-mance of a drilling turbine

Abstract

For turbo drilling machine operations, several types of drilling mud can be used. The major factors influencing the choice of drilling fluid are: Cost, ecological impact, and the technical performance of the machine. Water-based drilling mud is widely used in drilling turbines. It consists of freshwater with additives such as sand. These added materials will influence the properties of the mud, increasing the density, and changing the rheological properties. In this present work, the influence of the physical properties of the drilling mud (density, viscosity), and flow conditions (mass flow rate) on the performance and flow characteristics of a specified turbodrill Model is investigated. For this purpose, the computational fluid dynamics approach was used to simulate the flow inside one stage of the considered turbine. Various values of mass flow rate, density, and viscosity were tested. A very good agreement was found between the experimental measurements of the manufacturer and the current simulation results for the performance curves