Numerical analysis of frac plug: slips anchoring and damage to the casing

A frac plug is a piece of downhole equipment used toblock an oil well during the hydraulic fracturing process.One of the most important parts of a frac plug is the slip,which anchors to the casing of an oil well and keeps thefrac plug in its position during the process.In this study, finite element analysis (FEA) isemployed to simulate the behavior of the wicker-type slipunder working conditions. A ۳-D model was employedfor cyclic symmetric analysis in ABAQUS software.The results show that the teeth of the slip which arenear the cone, are more critical. Moving further from thecone, the contact stress and the plastic deformationdecrease on the teeth of the slip and the correspondingposition on the casing. Damage to the casing wasassumed to be related to the plastic deformation amount.The obtained results are in correlation with the previouslypublished works.

کلیدواژه ها:

frac plug ، slip ، damage ، casing