DS-DW-TimesNet-Driven Early Warning for Downhole Near-Bit Torque Vibrations

Downhole torsional vibrations, especially high-frequency torsional oscillations (HFTOs) and stick–slip phenomena, pose a serious threat to drilling operations, often resulting in tool damage, prolonged non-productive time, and significant cost increases. Traditional monitoring methods cannot promptly capture complex vibration patterns, so there is an urgent need for advanced early warning systems. This study proposes the DS-DW-TimesNet model, which improves the TimesNet framework by incorporating downsampling technology for efficient data compression, dilated convolution that can expand the temporal receptive field, and a learnable weight normalization method that can stabilize the training process, thereby enhancing the capabilities of feature extraction and long-sequence modeling. Verified using field data from the Fuman Oilfield, the results show that in terms of the mean absolute error (MAE) for 210 s predictions, this model is 77.2% and 21.8% lower than LSTM and Informer, respectively, and the inference speed is increased by 78.5% (reaching 48 milliseconds). It can provide reliable 210 s early warning windows for high-frequency torsional oscillations and 150 s early warning windows for stick–slip, exceeding industry standards and helping to improve the safety and efficiency of drilling operations.