A Full-Scale Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Coupled Numerical Model for Wellbore Injection Operations

Injection operations are critical in subsurface energy engineering, where wellbores endure complex thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupling under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions, impacting tubing string stability and wellbore long-term safety. Current tubing string THM research relies on simplified assumptions, focusing on single/dual-field coupling without full-scale modeling, failing to accurately characterize comprehensive multi-field behaviors or actual structural stress distributions. This paper presents a full-scale THM coupled numerical model for actual injection conditions, taking real wellbore structures as the object to realize unified modeling of tubing, packer, casing, cement sheath and formation, covering the entire well section and synergistically describing fluid flow, heat conduction and structural mechanical response. It considers fluid pressure/temperature effects on tubing axial load, thermal stress and deformation, as well as nonlinear boundary conditions like packer-casing contact and friction. The governing equations are discretized via the finite element method and solved by Newton iteration. Benchmark verification shows the maximum relative errors of casing inner/outer wall Mises stress vs. analytical solutions are 2.43% and 4.98%, confirming high accuracy. Systematic analysis of displacement, axial force, stress and temperature responses under typical conditions is conducted, providing reliable theoretical and technical support for wellbore structure optimization, injection parameter regulation and long-term wellbore integrity evaluation.

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Publication Details

Journal
Processes
Published
2026-05-10
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/pr14101540
Primary Topic
Drilling and Well Engineering
Type
article
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article

A Full-Scale Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Coupled Numerical Model for Wellbore Injection Operations

Quanbin Wang, XiuYuan Chen, Luo M, Chuan Yu et al.
Processes
Drilling and Well Engineering
article

A Full-Scale Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Coupled Numerical Model for Wellbore Injection Operations

Quanbin Wang, XiuYuan Chen, Luo M, Chuan Yu, Jun Fu, Deli Jia
article en

Abstract

Injection operations are critical in subsurface energy engineering, where wellbores endure complex thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupling under high-temperature and high-pressure conditions, impacting tubing string stability and wellbore long-term safety. Current tubing string THM research relies on simplified assumptions, focusing on single/dual-field coupling without full-scale modeling, failing to accurately characterize comprehensive multi-field behaviors or actual structural stress distributions. This paper presents a full-scale THM coupled numerical model for actual injection conditions, taking real wellbore structures as the object to realize unified modeling of tubing, packer, casing, cement sheath and formation, covering the entire well section and synergistically describing fluid flow, heat conduction and structural mechanical response. It considers fluid pressure/temperature effects on tubing axial load, thermal stress and deformation, as well as nonlinear boundary conditions like packer-casing contact and friction. The governing equations are discretized via the finite element method and solved by Newton iteration. Benchmark verification shows the maximum relative errors of casing inner/outer wall Mises stress vs. analytical solutions are 2.43% and 4.98%, confirming high accuracy. Systematic analysis of displacement, axial force, stress and temperature responses under typical conditions is conducted, providing reliable theoretical and technical support for wellbore structure optimization, injection parameter regulation and long-term wellbore integrity evaluation.

ProcessesVol. 14(10)
University of Science and Technology of China (CN), Research Institute of Petroleum Exploration and Development (CN), China National Petroleum Corporation (China) (CN)
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 5%
Drilling and Well Engineering
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A Full-Scale Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical Coupled Numerical Model for Wellbore Injection Operations — Quanbin Wang, XiuYuan Chen, et al. · Processes (2026) | TGRS Research Map | TGRS