In the framework of oil exploitation, one of the phenomena encountered, especially in sandstone reservoirs, is the production of sand at the same time as hydrocarbons.
The production of sand can lead to various problems generating sometimes excessive additional costs such as instability of the well up to the point of clogging, damage to equipment or uncontrolled eruptions, especially for gas reservoirs. However, this phenomenon sometimes significantly increases the production of hydrocarbons.
Upon Total’s request, a tool called SandWitch was developed by Phimeca to model sand occurrences by quantifying reservoir erosion.
SandWitch is a graphical interface for pre-post treatment and hydromechanical calculation based on a numerical model developed in Code_Aster. It is coded in PyQT and allows the identification of material parameters from triaxial tests, the meshing of the studied reservoir, the simulation of production conditions (depletion-drawdown) and the post-processing of results.