Joint Optimization of Well Placement and Control Using Multi-Stage, Multi-Swarm PSO
Authors: Kumar Ajitabh 
Published: February 2022

Evolutionary optimization algorithms, including particle swarm optimization (PSO), have been successfully applied in oil industry for production planning and control. Such optimization studies are quite challenging due to large number of decision variables, production scenarios, and subsurface uncertainties. In this work, multi-stage, multi-swarm PSO (MS2PSO) algorithm is proposed to fix certain issues with canonical PSO algorithm such as premature convergence, excessive influence of global best solution, and oscillation.

Multiple experiments are conducted using Olympus benchmark to compare the efficacy of algorithms. Results from canonical PSO are first compared with two PSO variations in which hyperparameters are tuned to prioritize exploration in early phase and exploitation in late phase. Firstly, linearly decreasing inertia weight (LDIW-PSO) is used to have greater weight of current particle position during initial iterations, and vice versa. Then, time-varying acceleration coefficients (TVAC-PSO) are used to have greater weight of personal best and lesser weight of global best during the initial iterations, and vice versa. Next, a two-stage multi-swarm PSO (2SPSO) is used where multiple-swarms of the first stage collapse into a single swarm in the second stage. Finally, MS2PSO with multiple stages and multiple swarms is used in which swarms recursively collapse after each stage. Multiple swarm strategy ensures that diversity is retained within the population and multiple modes are explored. Staging ensures that local optima found during initial stage does not lead to premature convergence. Optimization test case comprises of 90 control variables of which 72 are well control related and 18 are well placement related.

Swarm intelligence refers to global patterns emerging from simple interactions among population. Algorithmic rules at micro level lead to social interaction at meso level, which then further leads to collective behavior at macro level. It is observed that different algorithm designs have their own benefits and drawbacks. Decreasing inertia weight in LDIW-PSO enables exploration in early stages and convergence around global best in the later stages. TVAC-PSO on the other hand restricts social learning and aids exploration in the early iterations. Social learning component is increased as run progresses, and population moves towards global best. 2SPSO aids in exploring multi-modal objective space, thus preventing premature convergence to a local optima. Swarms collapse into one group in the second stage, and run finally converges towards global best. Multiple swarms and stages in MS2PSO ensure that diversity in population is maintained throughout the run which enables continuous learning, and thus mitigates premature convergence. Both 2SPSO and MS2PSO are found to be helpful for problems with high dimensions and multiple modes where greater degree of exploration is desired. Commercial cloud computing and parallel programming were used to handle high computational workload and reduce run-time from weeks to days.

Coefficients of canonical PSO are tuned in LDIW-PSO and TVAC-PSO, which helps in mitigating issues like premature convergence and oscillation. Two-stage PSO (2SPSO) where multiple swarms of first stage collapse into one in second stage, and multi-stage multi-swarm PSO (MS2PSO) where swarms recursively collapse into one are proposed. These algorithms modify the social behavior at meso scale based on number of swarms, number of stages and iterations in each stage.