Composite Wellbore Seal Structure for Reliable Isolation and Easy Removal
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing wellbore sealing devices face challenges in efficiently isolating wellbore sections and being readily removable after service life, often requiring complex removal methods like dissolution and drilling, which can be costly and inefficient.
Innovation Solution
A composite wellbore sealing device with reinforcement fibers strategically arranged to optimize performance and facilitate easy removal, utilizing computer-aided stress analysis and hybrid manufacturing techniques to create preferential failure zones, allowing for efficient drilling or dissolution at the end of service life.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If wellbore sealing devices are made with high structural integrity for effective isolation, then sealing reliability is improved, but removal difficulty increases requiring complex drilling or dissolution methods
Solution Approach 1:
The sealing device is divided into distinct functional segments: a reinforcement region with high structural integrity for sealing reliability, and a preferential failure zone with reduced reinforcement for easy removal. This segmentation allows the device to simultaneously achieve both reliable sealing during operation and easy removal after service life.
Solution Approach 2:
Different regions of the sealing device are given different structural qualities - the reinforcement region contains concentrated reinforcement fibers (e.g., steel, glass, or carbon fibers) embedded in matrix material to provide high strength for sealing, while the preferential failure zone has reduced or no reinforcement to enable easy drilling or dissolution for removal.
2Strength
If reinforcement fibers are strategically arranged to optimize performance, then structural integrity is improved, but manufacturing complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The reinforcement fibers are pre-arranged in the mold in specific patterns before the matrix material is added. This preliminary arrangement of fibers in the desired configuration simplifies the manufacturing process compared to attempting to arrange fibers after molding, while still achieving the optimized structural integrity in the reinforcement region.
Solution Approach 2:
The sealing device uses composite materials consisting of reinforcement fibers (steel, glass, or carbon) embedded in a matrix material. This composite structure provides high structural integrity where needed while allowing for simplified manufacturing through conventional molding techniques combined with pre-placed fiber arrangements.
Data Source
AI summary
Provided are wellbore sealing devices. The wellbore sealing devices comprise a plug body, a sealing device component for coupling to the plug body, and a matrix material. In some examples, the sealing device component includes a reinforced region having reinforcement fibers and a preferential failure zone outside of the reinforcement region with reduced or omitted reinforcement fibers. In examples, the matrix material may be molded about the reinforcement fibers to form the sealing device component with the reinforcement fibers embedded therein.