Modeling of Rotary Drillstring Vibrations: An Overview

This paper presents a review of the current status of research pertinent to the problem of modeling vibrations in rotary drillstring systems. Dynamic modeling of drillstrings is a challenging multidisciplinary problem due to the special structural features of the drillstring, as well as the intrinsic vibration excitations and interaction mechanisms; like stick–slip, whirling, string–borehole, and string–fluid interactions. The paper presents a focused, yet coherent overview of the problem of modeling vibrations in drillstrings in the light of the reported studies in the available literature. The paper begins with a brief overview of the drilling process and terminology, and then proceeds to review different approaches for modeling, including experimental model tuning and verification. The review concludes by highlighting the key research accomplishments, unresolved problems, and pending challenges including some computational considerations.