Preventive maintenance optimization of top drives in smart rotary drilling systems

Abstract

The increased competition in petroleum industry has pushed many companies to revise the preventive maintenance schedules in a way that allows them to use effectively the drilling equipments, and improve the availability of backup equipments while ensuring a continuous production for the hydrocarbons markets. This paper treated the optimization of equipments availability as an objective function, wherein, the manipulated parameters are failure rate, maintenance costs and production loss costs. The optimization algorithm has been transformed into Visual Basic Application (VBA), which provides optimum results in reasonable time. Moreover, the proposed approach has been applied to CANRIG 8050-AC 712 Top Drive used in smart rotary drilling systems; it is very expensive equipment and suffers a lot of failures due torsional vibrations. Furthermore, the effectiveness of the approach has been demonstrated through an application to field rotary drilling system belongs to the national drilling company ENAFOR