Ahmed Alsabaa1, Hany Gamal1, Salaheldin Elkatatny1,2, Yasmin Abdelraouf3. 1. Department of Petroleum Engineering and Geosciences, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia. 2. Center for Integrative Petroleum Research, King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia. 3. Chemical Engineering Department, Cairo University, 12613 Giza, Egypt.
Abstract
The drilling fluid rheology is a critical parameter during the oil and gas drilling operation to achieve optimum drilling performance without nonproductive time or extra remedial operation cost. The close monitoring for rheological properties will help the drilling fluid crew to take quick actions to maintain the designed profiles for the drilling fluid rheology, especially when it comes to the flat rheology drilling fluid system, which is a new generation for harsh and specific drilling conditions that require flat profiles for the mud rheology regarding the temperature condition changes. The current study introduces a machine learning application toward predicting the rheology of synthetic oil-based mud (flat rheology type) for the full automation system of monitoring the mud rheological properties. Four models are developed, for the first time, to determine the rheological characteristics of flat rheology synthetic oil-based system using artificial neural networks. The developed models are capable of predicting the plastic and apparent viscosities, yield point, and flow behavior index from only the mud density and Marsh funnel as model inputs. The proposed models were trained and optimized from a real field dataset (369 measurements) with further testing the models using an unseen dataset of 153 data points. The predicted rheological properties achieved a high degree of accuracy versus the actual measurements and showed a coefficient of correlation range from 0.91 to 0.97 with an average absolute percentage error of less than 9.66% during the training and testing phases. Besides, machine learning-based correlations are proposed for estimating the rheological properties on the rig site without running the machine learning system for easy field applications.
The drilling fluid rheology is a critical parameter during the oil and gas drilling operation to achieve optimum drilling performance without nonproductive time or extra remedial operation cost. The close monitoring for rheological properties will help the drilling fluid crew to take quick actions to maintain the designed profiles for the drilling fluid rheology, especially when it comes to the flat rheology drilling fluid system, which is a new generation for harsh and specific drilling conditions that require flat profiles for the mud rheology regarding the temperature condition changes. The current study introduces a machine learning application toward predicting the rheology of synthetic oil-based mud (flat rheology type) for the full automation system of monitoring the mud rheological properties. Four models are developed, for the first time, to determine the rheological characteristics of flat rheology synthetic oil-based system using artificial neural networks. The developed models are capable of predicting the plastic and apparent viscosities, yield point, and flow behavior index from only the mud density and Marsh funnel as model inputs. The proposed models were trained and optimized from a real field dataset (369 measurements) with further testing the models using an unseen dataset of 153 data points. The predicted rheological properties achieved a high degree of accuracy versus the actual measurements and showed a coefficient of correlation range from 0.91 to 0.97 with an average absolute percentage error of less than 9.66% during the training and testing phases. Besides, machine learning-based correlations are proposed for estimating the rheological properties on the rig site without running the machine learning system for easy field applications.
During the drilling operations for oil and gas wells, drilling
fluids are pumped for many functions such as controlling the drilled
formation pressure to prevent any kick situations during drilling
the abnormally pressured zones and carrying the drilled cuttings to
the surface through the circulation system for good hole cleaning
conditions.[1] In addition, drilling fluids
provide lubrication and cooling of the drill string and the drill
bit and format a filter cake to provide good wellbore stability and
prevent mud filtration that causes formation damage.[2]The drilling fluids are classified based on the base
fluid for
preparing the mud that is mainly oil- or water-based. These two classes
are commonly utilized in the petroleum industry during drilling operations.[3−5] Each class provides special technical aspects for the drilling fluid,
and therefore, the mud program provides the drilling fluid composition
based on the drilled formation sensitivity, drilling fluid activity,
level of interest for the drilled section, and safety issues.[6] The composition of the drilling fluids is technically
designed to provide efficient filtration and rheological properties
for the drilling fluid for better performance during the drilling
operations.[7]Synthetic oil-based
mud is considered one of the oil-based drilling
fluid categories and is mainly customized to be utilized through drilling
the reservoir section for better drilling performance and protecting
the drilled section from formation damage.[8] Hence, the synthetic oil-based mud system has many advantages such
as nondamageable characteristics toward the drilled zones and provide
flat rheology performance during drilling operations. Flat rheological
properties are required for some specific applications during the
oil and gas well drilling such as deep water drilling, extended reach
drilling, and cold drilling environment; the concept is to provide
flat rheology for the drilling fluid that does not change with the
temperature conditions.[9] The flat rheology
topic is introduced to the drilling fluid research and field applications
with newly developed materials due to its efficient performance.[10] The flat rheology synthetic oil-based mud is
one of the flat rheology mud generations that is utilized for harsh
and critical drilling conditions for efficient drilling and hydraulic
systems that will greatly affect the drilling cost.[11,12] The cost and fluid handling precautions are considered main disadvantages
for this mud system in the drilling operations.
Rheology
Measurements and Automation System
The standard procedures
for measuring the fluid rheology are followed
in the rig site during the drilling operation to monitor the rheology
profiles and assure the proficient performance for the drilling fluid
by the testing approaches.[13] These measurements
provide technical information about the fluid rheological properties
in terms of plastic viscosity, mud yield point, and time gel strengths
with routine testing with time by the drilling mud crew. It is an
essential process to continuously measure the drilling fluid rheology
as this affects the mud functions, drilling performance, hydraulics,
circulation operations, and pressure losses.[14−16]Marsh
funnel viscosity represents the time for flowing a quantity of fluid
volume (930 cm3) through the open orifice of the funnel.[17] A Fann35 rotating viscometer is used for determining
the mud rheological properties (viscosity and gel strength of drilling
mud) as the device recorded the shear stress versus the shear rate
for different speeds at 300 and 600 revolutions per minute (RPM);
then, the plastic viscosity (PV), yield point (YP), apparent viscosity
(AV), and flow behavior index (n) are, respectively,
calculated through the following equations[18]The frequency to measure each fluid property
is different based on the critical impact on the well control and
drilling operations[19] as the mud density
and Marsh funnel viscosity properties are measured every hour from
three to four times. The alterations for the collected rheological
measurements provide a strong alert about the rock sensitivity and
mud activity and stability performance after exposure to the drilled
formations.[20] The mud rheological properties
were found to have a good relationship with the two common properties
for the mud, which are mud weight and Marsh funnel viscosity. In the
literature, Pitt[77] and Almahdawi et al.[78] provided two correlations that correlate the
mud apparent viscosity to the mud weight and Marsh funnel viscosity
aswhere AV is the apparent viscosity
in (cP),
ρm is the mud weight in g/cm3, and μF is Marsh funnel viscosity in seconds.However, the
empirical correlations did not provide the required
accuracy level.[21] Therefore, the application
of machine learning is considered an alternative research horizon
for predicting the mud rheological properties to overcome the limitations
of the mathematical correlations. Machine learning can be defined
as a computational coding process that provides a learning capability
from a set of data through the interrelations between parameters.
This technique is mainly developed based on data statistical analysis
and algorithms to achieve the learning objective for classification
or prediction purposes.[22−24]The new research trend
is to provide automated systems for monitoring
the mud rheological properties through the drilling operations that
will save time, be more accurate, and generate the rheology measurements
with high frequency.[25−28] New devices are developed in addition to machine learning approaches
for this objective; however, the prediction machine learning systems
are still needed for a complete loop system for acquiring the rheological
properties of different drilling fluid types.[29]
Machine Learning Applications
The
recent applications using machine learning techniques for the petroleum
data are studied over a wide range of research scope for exploration,
drilling, production, field development, and petroleum processing
activities. The machine learning applications provided successful
improvements for the operation performance, solving technical problems,
and cost savings. The machine learning tools were utilized for several
studies in drilling operations for optimizing the drilling performance,[30−34] studying the reservoir fluid characteristics[35−40] and reservoir rock properties such as density,[41] porosity[42] and permeability,[43,44] rock geomechanics.[45−49]The drilling fluids’ rheological properties were studied
through many different studies for developing predictive models for
fluid rheology.[50−54] These studies focused on predicting the rheological properties for
different mud systems such as oil-based mud,[50,55] water-based drill-in mud,[51] invert emulsion
type,[53,56] water-based KCl mud,[57] drilling fluid CaCl2,[58][58] and water-based NaCl drill-in fluid.[51] These applications contributed to enriching
the literature with high-level accuracy machine learning models that
are developed for specific mud types.Consequently, the current
study introduces a new machine learning
model for predicting the flat rheology synthetic oil-based mud system
that will help achieve the optimum drilling performance based on optimizing
the mud functions. Hence, the developed models will use the March
funnel and mud density measurements to predict the rheological properties
of the drilling fluid for better monitoring the mud functionality
during the drilling operations on the rig site. The full automation
for the mud rheology monitoring is one of the main goals for the current
research to provide a full machine learning system for the most common
types of drilling fluids in the oil and gas field as invert emulsion,
all-oil, and Maxbridg mud systems.[54,59,60]This study introduces machine learning models
for monitoring the
rheological properties for flat rheology synthetic oil-based mud systems.
The artificial neural network (ANN) technique was employed to develop
ANN-based models for predicting four rheological properties, which
are plastic viscosity (PV), apparent viscosity (AV), yield point (YP),
and flow behavior index (η). The prediction models were built
to have only two inputs, which are mud weight (ρm) and Marsh funnel viscosity (μF). Furthermore,
the study proposed ANN-based equations for estimating four rheological
properties for easy calculation and better tracking for the mud rheology
during the drilling operations that will enhance the drilling fluid
performance.This introduction will be followed by the detailed
approach used
in this study in Section . All the results from this work are explained and depicted
on graphs in Section with complete discussion of the obtained results and comparing them
to the previous papers in Section . The last section in this paper shows the conclusions
of this work.
Materials and Methods
The study used collected data for the flat rheology synthetic oil-based
mud system. The data were gathered from the mud reports that cover
all the measurements for the mud rheology. The developed models were
built by utilizing the ANN tool to develop a separate model for each
property based on the model parameter optimization. The model accuracy
was determined by calculating the correlation coefficient (R) and the average absolute percentage errors (AAPE) between
the actual and predicted values. The closer the R to 1 regardless of being negative or positive, the stronger the
relationship between the variables. In this study, the positive correlation
coefficient means a direct relationship and negative R means an indirect relationship.[61]There are several machine learning techniques; but in this research,
ANN was used because of several advantages. The most important benefit
from using the ANN is the ability to extract the weights and biases
to be applied in an equation. This makes the research results available
for further investigation and comparison. The training phase with
ANN can go through several runs with several parameters changing to
get the optimum parameters to get the most accurate model.
Study Approach
The methodology approach
for the study started from the data collection for the rheological
properties from the mud reports, followed by the data preprocessing
for enhancing the data quality by performing data cleaning and filtering
to remove the illogic values from the wrong measurements and the outliers.
The data statistical analysis is very important especially for determining
the data range (minimum to maximum) for each property as this will
affect the model application limitations as the wide data range will
be better for providing a good range for the training database for
the developed models. The data analysis helped reveal the interrelations
between the rheological properties and the complexity level for correlating
these parameters. Building the models started after the data preprocessing
for the high-quality data by optimizing the ANN model parameters for
better prediction and studying the sensitivity for each model parameter
on the prediction performance. The model performance was checked to
determine if the accepted accuracy level is achieved or not based
on the R and AAPE values. The model retraining process might be encountered
in case the performance level is not accepted. Finally, the best model
parameters and results were reported.
Data
Description and Statistics
The
recorded parameters covered all the six properties for the flat rheology
synthetic oil-based mud, which are plastic viscosity, apparent viscosity,
yield point, flow behavior index, and consistency factor (model outputs),
in addition to the mud weight and Marsh funnel viscosity (model input
parameters). This study introduces a novel contribution regarding
selecting only two inputs for the model development, which are mud
weight and Marsh funnel viscosity, as the other studies in the literature
included other inputs such as the temperature, shear rate, and solid
content,[62,63] and hence, the new approach will save time
and eliminate the measurement errors to the data.[53] The study uses only mud density and Marsh funnel as model
inputs as these parameters have high-frequency measurements (3–4
times per hour) and are easy to measure on the rig site without advanced
lab testing.The dataset covered 522 data points after the data
cleaning and preprocessing to remove all the illogic values and outliers.
As shown in Table , the data represented a wide range for the rheological properties
as the mud weight ranged from 70 to 120 pounds per cubic foot (pcf),
Marsh funnel ranged from 44 to 120 s, plastic viscosity (PV) ranged
from 14 to 74 cP, and apparent viscosity (AV) ranged
from 22.5 to 89 cP. The mud yield point (YP) ranged from 11 to 30
lb/100 ft2, and the flow behavior index (η) has a
range of 0.52–0.87. Figure shows the model input and output profiles for the
study.
Table 1
Data Statistical Analysis
statistical
parameter
ρm [pcf]
μF [s]
PV [cP]
YP [lb/100 ft2]
η
AV [cP]
minimum
70
44
14
11
0.52
22.50
maximum
120
120
74
30
0.87
89
mean
98.92
67.78
37.39
15.83
0.75
45.31
median
104
67
36
15
0.77
44
standard deviation
13.08
11.52
13.04
3.05
0.06
13.89
kurtosis
–0.70
1.25
0.35
5.96
0.36
0.72
skewness
–0.70
0.75
0.63
1.89
–0.74
0.77
Figure 1
Model input and output profiles for the study.
Model input and output profiles for the study.
Data Analysis
The correlation coefficients
were studied between the model inputs and outputs and showed a strong
direct relationship between the mud weight with both plastic and apparent
plastic viscosity (R is 0.70); R is 0.64 between mud weight and flow behavior index, and R is 0.37 between the mud weight with yield point, which
is considered the lowest correlation coefficient. The Marsh funnel
reported a strong direct relationship with the outputs with R ranging from 0.45 with the flow behavior index to 0.70
with the apparent viscosity as shown in Figure .
Figure 2
Correlation coefficients between the model inputs
and outputs.
Correlation coefficients between the model inputs
and outputs.The model inputs are plotted versus
every output individually to
study the scatter plots for the data as shown in Figure . There is no clear type of
relationship between the parameters, and this ensures the complexity
of the problem in this study. The application of machine learning
is considered helpful for this case as it will provide a high learning
capability between the relationships of the parameters.
Figure 3
Scatter plots
between the model inputs versus (a) PV, (b) YP, (c)
η, and (d) AV.
Scatter plots
between the model inputs versus (a) PV, (b) YP, (c)
η, and (d) AV.
Artificial
Neural Network Technique
Machine learning has many tools
that can be employed for the models’
development, and the artificial neural network is one of the most
common tools for machine learning utilization and modeling applications
in the petroleum industry.[64−67] The tool has the capability to mimic the biological
neural system for thinking by problem learning.[68,69] The structure of the ANN tool starts from a minimum of three layers
named the input layer for the input parameters, hidden layer for processing,
and output layer for the target parameter prediction.[70−73] The tool has interconnected neurons for linking the layers and affects
the performance of the network processing.[74,75] The learning approach for the data is achieved through different
learning algorithms.[76] Developing a machine
learning model using the ANN tool must be studied through a deep analysis
for each network parameter and analysis of its effect on the prediction
accuracy. These parameters cover the network function, training function,
transfer function, number of hidden layers, and number of neurons
in the hidden layer/s.The data were divided into two sets for
the training process and testing the model, and different learning
algorithms were utilized to obtain the best learning for the relationships
between the inputs and output rheological property. For each rheological
parameter, the best model parameters were reported based on the best
model accuracy.
Results
Model
Parameter Optimization
The
model performance is highly affected by the model parameters for the
ANN, and hence, sensitivity analysis through many trial procedures
for the best model parameters in terms of the number of hidden layer/s,
the number of neurons in the hidden layer/s, network function, training
function, and transfer function should be performed to record and
save all of these parameters. Increasing the number of hidden layers
and neurons will help increase the model accuracy; however, this will
cause an increase in the computational processing time for running
the model. The simple ANN structure with fewer hidden layers and neurons
will supply better computational processing time for the model but
might not provide high accuracy for the developed model. Hence, achieving
the best accuracy results with the simple ANN structure (hidden layers
and neurons number) is needed through the sensitivity analysis process
for the model development.The sensitivity analysis was executed
for the dataset, and the model accuracy was evaluated through the
statistical metrics such as the correlation coefficient (R) and average absolute percentage error (AAPE) between the actual
and predicted values. The sensitivity was completed for a wide range
of the model parameters, and Table shows the best parameters for each rheological property
with the accuracy for the training and testing results.
Table 2
Sensitivity Analysis Results
ANN model
parameters
training results
resting results
model
neurons number
training
function
transfer
function
R
AAPE (%)
R
AAPE (%)
YP
12
Bayesian regularization
backpropagation
radial
basis
0.91
5.65
0.92
8.19
PV
10
tan-sigmoid
0.94
9.59
0.94
9.66
η
18
0.94
1.55
0.92
2.69
AV
10
0.97
5.13
0.95
6.79
The sensitivity showed that all the models achieved
high results
for both training and testing phases during developing the rheology
prediction models as R was higher than 0.91 and AAPE
was less than 9.6%. The correlation coefficient of testing for the
plastic viscosity model same as the apparent viscosity model, and
it was 0.94 which is more than the other two models. The correlation
coefficient of testing for the yield point and the behavior index
was only 0.92, and the maximum AAPE of testing for all the models
was 9.7% for the plastic viscosity model.All models were tested
for the neuron number from 5 to 40 using
only one hidden layer to have a simple structure for the ANN models,
and the N ranged from 10 for the PV and AV model
to record 18 for the behavior index model. The best training function
for all rheological property models was achieved by Bayesian regularization
backpropagation. The optimum transfer functions between the inputs
and hidden layer were tan-sigmoid transfer functions for PV, η,
and AV models. The YP-developed model has a radial basis transfer
function between the inputs and hidden layer.
Model
Training Results
The training
of the network was done to obtain the best models that can predict
the output rheological property from the input data. Input for all
models was only the mud weight and the Marsh funnel viscosity. The
training dataset for developing the models is the 369 dataset that
is separate from the testing dataset. The predicted values for the
training dataset were compared to the actual recorded values to show
the models’ accuracy.The final acceptance of the developed
models is not decided till the model is tested by the testing dataset
that is unseen by the model during the training process. In this research,
the accuracy of the predicted values for the training and testing
datasets is shown separately to show the quality of the predicted
models.The predicted values were compared to the actual values
in terms
of R and AAPE. The model that obtained the highest
correlation coefficient (R of 0.97) for the training
dataset was the apparent viscosity (AV) as shown in the plot of Figure d. The yield point
has the lowest correlation coefficient for its developed model, which
was an R of 0.91 (Figure b). Both plastic viscosity and behavior index
have the same correlation coefficient of 0.94, which shows excellent
accuracy for the models (Figure a,c).
Figure 4
Training results for the rheological propery prediction.
(a) PV,
(b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.
Training results for the rheological propery prediction.
(a) PV,
(b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.The highest average absolute percentage error was for the plastic
viscosity (PV) that had only 9.59% (Figure a), while the behavior index (η) was
the lowest AAPE with only 1.55% (Figure c). The apparent viscosity (AV) and the yield
point (YP) models were of only 5.13 and 5.65% AAPE (Figure b,d).In addition, the
rheological property plots for the actual versus
predicted are shown in Figure , which shows the high degree of match for the log profiles
of each rheological property (PV, YP, η, and AV) as shown in
the plots of Figure a–d, respectively. The Y-axis shows the index
of the data that is the test point measurement.
Figure 5
Rheological property
logs for actual versus predicted values (training
set). (a) PV, (b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.
Rheological property
logs for actual versus predicted values (training
set). (a) PV, (b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.
Model Testing Results
The main criteria
to accept the trained model are the accuracy with a separate dataset
that is unseen by the model during training. The chosen testing set
is of almost the same range as the training dataset to assure the
integrity of the model. The developed models were tested with the
unseen dataset (153 data points) for the testing process. The plots
of Figure show the
testing results for the rheological property prediction for PV, YP,
η, and AV rheological property models (Figure a–d respectively). The correlation
coefficient recorded higher than 0.92 for all models (Figure ), and the AAPE ranged from
2.69% (for the behavior index model) to 9.66% (for the plastic viscosity
model). These AAPE values are accepted based on the values of the
rheological properties for the current dataset in addition to the
log profiles for the actual and predicted values.
Figure 6
Testing results for the
rheological property prediction. (a) PV,
(b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.
Testing results for the
rheological property prediction. (a) PV,
(b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.The rheological property profiles were plotted to show the actual
versus predicted values for the testing dataset as represented in Figure a–d plots
for PV, YP, η, and AV rheology models.
Figure 7
Rheological property
logs for actual versus predicted values (testing
set). (a) PV, (b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.
Rheological property
logs for actual versus predicted values (testing
set). (a) PV, (b) YP, (c) η, and (d) AV.The real measurements versus the predicted values were plotted
to present the rheology logs based on the obtained results’
accuracy from training and testing results. The rheology data profiles
proved the accepted accuracy for the models based on the recorded
statistical metrics R and AAPE.
Machine
Learning-Based Equations
New ANN-based equations were extracted
from the developed ANN rheological
prediction models. The ANN-based equations are proposed to be used
easily without the need for the developed machine learning code. To
utilize the developed empirical correlation, the input values should
be normalized to be in the range between −1 and 1 based on
the minimum and maximum values for all parameters that are listed
in Table . The proposed
equations can be used for rheological property prediction in the normalized
form. The form for each property is determined by the model transfer
function as shown in the following equationswhere N represents the optimized
neuron number, w1 and w2 are the weights between the input layer and the hidden layer and
the hidden layer and the output layer respectively. b1 is the associated bias
with each hidden layer neurons, and b2 is the associated bias for the output layer.The weights and
biases were extracted from the ANN structure of the developed models
after saving the final optimized network for each output. The correlations
use the weights and biases that are listed in Tables –6 for the four rheological properties.
Table 3
Weights and Biases for the AV Model
i
w1i,1
w1i,2
b1i
w2i
b2
1.00
–4.18
–1.24
–0.14
–1.43
0.16
2.00
1.69
–2.43
0.76
–2.00
3.00
–1.56
–3.74
1.18
–3.12
4.00
–2.16
–0.93
–0.49
–2.24
5.00
2.47
4.42
–0.95
–1.97
6.00
–0.33
2.91
0.19
1.57
7.00
–1.51
4.59
–0.64
1.92
8.00
–3.97
0.41
0.08
2.39
9.00
4.54
1.80
0.80
1.99
10.00
–4.19
2.76
0.17
–2.95
Table 6
Weights and Biases for the YP Model
i
w1i,1
w1i,2
b1i
w2i
b2
1.00
–2.14
–1.61
0.42
2.08
0.04
2.00
0.43
4.24
–0.02
–2.15
3.00
0.00
0.00
–0.29
1.64
4.00
–0.07
2.24
0.27
–2.40
5.00
–1.19
–1.04
–0.28
–1.87
6.00
2.81
–3.77
0.14
–3.20
7.00
5.10
0.82
–0.16
2.24
8.00
–3.33
–2.08
0.19
–1.63
9.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
–2.14
10.00
2.47
–4.22
–0.42
2.69
11.00
1.68
0.24
–0.17
–2.51
12.00
–0.29
2.42
–0.35
–1.74
Discussion
The current
study presented new contributions of the automation
process for predicting the mud rheological properties for better monitoring
during the drilling operation. As mentioned in Section , the study utilized only two features (mud
density and Marsh funnel viscosity) to develop the four prediction
models, and these two parameters are easy to measure on the rig site
in addition to the high frequency of measurement for these parameters
during the mud monitoring process (3–4 times per hour). Consequently,
the study will provide the rheological properties with high-frequency
data based on the input measurement frequency rather than the long
time for the experimental lab measurements for the mud rheology.In addition, the study implemented the ANN technique to build four
different models for the mud rheology, and deep sensitivity was checked
for the best ANN parameters to acquire the best results for the rheology
prediction. It worthy to mention that it might be better to estimate
several variables (rheological properties) with only one ANN model;
however, it is not applicable in this case due to the complexity of
the problem, the data behavior, in addition to the new trend to use
only two inputs for the prediction. The model development process
tested this approach during the model development and found that the
current results are optimum for this specific approach but might work
for another scope or dataset.The obtained results from the
developed models were compared with
the most common models in the literature to check the model accuracy
over the existing model for field applications. The study compared
the obtained results with Pitt,[77] and Almahdawi
et al.[78] developed correlations for estimating
the apparent viscosity. Figure presents the log profile for the testing dataset that shows
the good accuracy and high match between the actual measurements and
the predicted values from the ANN model; however, the two correlations
(Pitt and Almahdawi et al.) show a high degree of overestimation for
the AV. The statistical accuracy metrics show that R is 0.82 for Pitt and Almahdawi et al. correlations with high errors
(AAPE is 36.1 and 45.9 for Almahdawi et al. and Pitt, respectively).
The newly developed ANN-AV model overcomes the two correlations with
high accuracy for a high R-value (0.95) and low errors
(6.8%) between the predicted and actual measurement of apparent viscosity.
Figure 8
AV prediction
comparison with published models. Log profile (left)
and accuracy metrics (right).
AV prediction
comparison with published models. Log profile (left)
and accuracy metrics (right).
Conclusions
The current study presented a new contribution
for the rheological
properties automation monitoring system for the flat rheology synthetic
oil-based mud through the machine learning application. The study
employed the ANN technique to develop rheological prediction models
for the mud plastic and apparent viscosities, yield point, and flow
behavior index. The following outcomes are concluded from the obtained
results and analysis:Deep sensitivity
analysis for the model parameters was
achieved and found that the best parameters are only one hidden layer,
from 10 to 18 neurons; the training function is Bayesian regularization
backpropagation, with different optimum networks and transfer functions
for the developed models.The training
results showed that R is
greater than 0.91 and AAPE did not exceed 9.6% for the four models.The developed models were tested and showed
a great
prediction performance in terms of R and AAPE, as R ranges from 0.92 to 0.95 and AAPE from 6.3 to 2.7%.New ANN-based equations were developed based on the
optimized ANN models that can be used to estimate the mud rheology
with high accuracy in real-time good monitoring for the drilling fluid
performance without the need to have the code.
Authors: Alex Graves; Marcus Liwicki; Santiago Fernández; Roman Bertolami; Horst Bunke; Jürgen Schmidhuber Journal: IEEE Trans Pattern Anal Mach Intell Date: 2009-05 Impact factor: 6.226