INVESTIGATION OF PRESSURE SURGES DUE TO VALVE ACTIONS IN WELLBORES TO ESTIMATE RESERVOIR PARAMETERS

Date

2025-7-09

Author

YILDIZ, Tabiat Tan

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Sudden velocity changes—whether natural or operational—generate pressure surges that travel as waves through pipes. The best-known example is the water-hammer pulse produced by a sudden valve closure. In petroleum engineering, such transients have been analyzed to estimate flow rate, detect diameter restrictions, and identify wax, scale, or corrosion. More recently, researchers have shown that the same waves also contain information about near-wellbore reservoir properties. This study models the surge created by rapid valve closure with a transient one-dimensional pipe-flow solver and couples it to both analytical and numerical representations of the reservoir. The framework captures single-phase oil, gas, and fractured formations by linking pressure and flux at the sand face. A finite-element implementation replaces earlier hybrid schemes, allowing pipe hydraulics and porous-medium flow to be solved simultaneously and thus representing pressure-wave behavior more accurately. To improve data quality, the work also proposes relocating the fast-acting valve and quartz gauge down-hole, close to the perforations. This configuration minimizes signal attenuation, preserves high-frequency content, and enhances sensitivity to reservoir parameters. Finally, sensitivity analyses examine how fluid compressibility, acoustic velocity, tubing geometry, fracture conductivity, and valve-closure timing influence the recorded response. Results demonstrate that the coupled model distinguishes subtle variations in both pipe conditions and reservoir behavior, providing a practical tool for down-hole diagnostics and reservoir characterization

Subject Keywords

Pipe flow, Valve closure event, Pressure wave propagation, Well Testing, Reservoir parameters

URI

https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115475

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Graduate School of Natural and Applied Sciences, Thesis