Stresses Around Wellbores in Nonlinear Rock
Authors: Mahtab M.A. , Goodman R.E. 
Published: December 2007

The state of stress around a vertical wellbore in rock following nonlinear stress-strain laws is examined by means of finite element analysis. The wellbore is considered an axisymmetric body with axisymmetric loading. The initial vertical and horizontal stresses are "locked" in the rock elements around the wellbore and a new state of stress is generated by the displacements which occur around the borehole. A point-wise variation of the elastic moduli is made on the basis of the new stress state and the triaxial data. The initial stresses are now reintroduced along with the changed moduli and original boundary constraints. This procedure is repeated until convergent stresses are reached.

The effect of nonlinearity on stresses is examined for a 6,000-ft wellbore in a schistose gneiss and Berea sandstone using results of laboratory triaxial compression tests. The results show that the effect is restricted to one well radius from the bottom periphery of the hole. Beyond a distance of one-quarter radius, the effect of nonlinearity on stresses is almost always less than 5 percent for the cases considered. The consideration of a static pressure inside the well does not magnify the effect of nonlinearity on borehole stresses.

INTRODUCTION

The terms "wellbore" and "borehole" here designate cylindrical openings in the ground with vertical axis and a circular cross-section. A knowledge of the stress redistribution that occurs on excavating a wellbore is important in understanding the behavior of the lined or unlined hole, hydraulic fracture response, and the effect of stress redistribution on drillability; also it is important in predicting initial stresses in the virgin ground, and in analyzing the response of measuring instruments placed in the borehole.

Our knowledge of the state of stress around a wellbore has been restricted to homogeneous, isotropic, elastic material and derives chiefly from the analysis by Miles and Topping1 and the photoelastic work of Galle and Wilhoit2 and Word and Wilhoit.3 In this investigation the state of stress is examined for a nonlinear elastic material by means of finite element analysis.

Many rocks possess stress-strain curves that depart notably from straight lines in their initial or final portions. While the literature contains abundant stress-strain data from triaxial tests (axisymmetric loading) on cylindrical rock specimens, there is little information on rock deformability under nonaxisymmetric loading conditions such as occur at each point around the bottom of a wellbore. Although there is some knowledge of the effect of intermediate principal stress on rock strength, there is virtually nothing known about its effect on rock deformability; therefore, we have assumed here that the effect of intermediate principal stress can be ignored.

A schistose gneiss4 and Berea sandstone5 were selected as representative rocks for this analysis. The traditional graphs of deviator stress (s1-s3) vs axial strain were reworked to give the tangent modulus as a function of the deviator stress for varying values of the minor principal stress. The result is a nesting family of skewed, bell-shaped curves for the gneiss (Fig. 1A) and the sandstone (Fig. 2A). A similar replotting of the lateral strain data defines the variation of Poisson's ratio (?) with the deviator stress and confining pressure. These curves, shown in Fig. 1B for the gneiss and in Fig. 2B for the sandstone, are not so well ordered as the tangent modulus curves. However, all of these display an increase of ? with deviator stress application, but the rate of increase diminishes with confinement. The ET and ? curves for the two rock types are tabulated in Tables 1A and 1B for use in a digital computer so that material properties corresponding to a given state of stress can be assigned by interpolation.