Experimental verification of acoustic communication along drill pipes

• Main Author: Lim, Eugene Shizheng.
• Other Authors: Guan Yong Liang
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2013
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Electrical and electronic engineering::Wireless communication systems
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/53332
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Acoustic communications is a cost-effective to monitor real-time conditions of drilling operations. To predict the propagation behaviour of acoustic wave along drill pipes, the finite-different method is used. The results from the mathematical predictions were then verified with measurements taken from the scaled-down model of the drill string. This report will describe on the research of previous work on acoustic telemetry in drill string. Next, the simulations of the scaled-down model will be discussed. This is followed by the experiment on the measurements of acoustic signal propagation along the drill pipes using the scaled-down model of drill string in different pipe length configuration. The results obtained from the current experiments will be compared with the simulated results from the finite-difference model simulations. It is concluded from the findings that the telemetry performance degrade with increasing pipe length. Findings also showed that 8-pipe ascending-descending order arrangement produces the best performance compared to the other variable pipe arrangements.