Full-Scale Drilling Test Facility: Fast Field Validation of Drilling Automation Solutions

The worldwide land and offshore drilling fleet is implementing automated rig and bottom hole assembly (BHA) control functionality using surface and downhole data. End-user validation of automation functionality, conducted during early development, is imperative for qualification. Late-user adoption and inappropriate test environments cause lengthy and costly system adjustments and detrimentally affect end-user trust in the operational system. This paper presents the experiences and benefits of using a full-scale test rig for acceptance testing of automation functionality. The test rig has been instrumental in shortening the time required to qualify BHAs and validate the functionality of automated features covering automated directional drilling (ADD), optimization of drilling parameters, and a variety of well protection features, such as the definition of safe operating envelopes (SOE) for surface parameters. By including a full-scale test rig in the process of technology development, the risk of downhole tools or software malfunctioning is greatly reduced. This translates into more stable deployments and avoidance of non-production time (NPT). In the context of drilling automation applications, the test rig has enabled a faster validation of automated directional drilling (ADD) features in full control mode. This has been achieved by drilling over 2000m of pre-defined well paths covering a variety of drilling and steering scenarios. Such test deployments have enabled a faster evaluation of performance, robustness and accuracy of the overall application. For the case of advisory applications, such as rate-of-penetration (ROP) optimization and well protection, the test rig facilitates and end-to-end validation of the whole data chain including visualization. The visualization concept used by the drilling automation applications varies depending on the final user: directional driller (DD), drilling optimization engineers (DOE), and the driller. For the case of the driller, a driller’s advisory display is installed in the driller’s cabin to show target set points of surface parameters and steering commands, as well as set point limits for surface parameters and the rig equipment. Having a dedicated UI in front of the driller at the test rig provides a faster feedback loop to appraise user acceptance.