Data-Driven Framework to Predict the Rheological Properties of CaCl 2 Brine-Based Drill-in Fluid Using Artificial Neural Network

Calcium chloride brine-based drill-in fluid is commonly used within the reservoir section, as it is specially formulated to maximize drilling experience, and to protect the reservoir from being damaged. Monitoring the drilling fluid rheology including plastic viscosity, P V , apparent viscosity, A V , yield point, Y p , flow behavior index, n , and flow consistency index, k , has great importance in evaluating hole cleaning and optimizing drilling hydraulics. Therefore, it is very crucial for the mud rheology to be checked periodically during drilling, in order to control its persistent change. Such properties are often measured in the field twice a day, and in practice, this takes a long time (2–3 h for taking measurements and cleaning the instruments). However, mud weight, M W , and Marsh funnel viscosity, M F , are periodically measured every 15–20 min. The objective of this study is to develop new models using artificial neural network, ANN, to predict the rheological properties of calcium chloride brine-based mud using M W and M F measurements then extract empirical correlations in a white-box mode to predict these properties based on M W and M F . Field measurements, 515 points, representing actual mud samples, were collected to build the proposed ANN models. The optimized parameters of these models resulted in highly accurate results indicated by a high correlation coefficient, R , between the predicted and measured values, which exceeded 0.97, with an average absolute percentage error, AAPE , that did not exceed 6.1%. Accordingly, the developed models are very useful for monitoring the mud rheology to optimize the drilling operation and avoid many problems such as hole cleaning issues, pipe sticking and loss of circulation.