An experimental investigation on the effect of grain size on oil-well sand production

Sand production in oil wells is closely related to the mechanical behavior and petrographical properties of sandstones reservoir.Grain size is one of the main parameters controlling the phenomenon,which is studied in this paper.Large-scale hollow cylindrical synthetic samples with the same rock strength but different grain sizes were tested by an experimental setup in the laboratory.Different external stresses and fluid flow rates were applied to the samples and produced sand was measured continuously.Results show two different trends between sanding stress level and grain size.For the samples with finer grain size(D50＜0.3 mm),the required confining stress for different sanding levels decreased with an increase in the grain size and for the samples with the coarser grains(D50＞0.3 mm)the required confining stress for different sanding levels dramatically increased with an increase in the grain size.Those two different trends were discussed and explained.The first one was production of individual grains and the second was bigger chunks in the slab form.In samples with large grains,plastic zones around hole were changed to a completely loose zone including interlocked individual grains or cluster of grains.In these samples after breakage of these interlocked zones sand was produced in the form of individual grains and clusters.Contrary to this,for samples with smaller grain size,shear bands were formed around the plastified hole and sand was produced in the form of big chunks or slabs.