CFD-DEM Validation of Sand Retention Testing

The production of sand in unconsolidated reservoirs has always been a problem to tackle where it affects oil production when plugged. With that, sand retention testing has been conducted to select the sand screen based on its performance and permeability. Numerous experimental studies have outlined ways to select the optimal screen size. However, not many numerical studies have been conducted to simulate the experiment as it comes to the limitations of computational power. In this study, it was shown that it is possible to simulate the experimental conditions into the simulation platform and obtain results that would suffice in selecting the screen size with other factors to consider. The results obtained from the experiment were used to compare with the results obtained from the simulation. The obtained numerical simulation results were not accurate as there were several factors to consider, namely the duration of the simulation difference, a comparative study between the particle size distribution of the simulated particles and the actual ceramic beads, and to conduct of an independent mesh study.