Flow around a rock perforation surrounded by crushed zone: Experiments vs. theory

This study concentrates on the behaviour of single-phase steady-state flow in a perforated core including non-Darcy flow and the effect of the crushed zone. The effect of perforation parameters on the core flow performance has been studied by performing steady-state core experiments and simulating the results numerically. The governing equations describing the flow have been solved based on the finite-element method using the Femlab mathematical package (version 2.3, 2002). The results of the model demonstrated the limitations of the models currently used in well completion engineering. The results of this study indicated that different physically reasonable sets of permeability-porosity-thickness (k-f-h) values of the uniformly crushed zone around the perforation could be assigned to represent single-phase flow performance including inertial effects. The status of the tip of the perforation for two extreme cases of totally closed tip and fully open tip was evaluated and found to have minimal effect on the performance of the system. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.