Managing Drilling Vibrations Through BHA Design Optimization

Significant performance improvement has been achieved by successfully managing drilling vibrations through bottomhole<br>assembly (BHA) redesign. This effort has resulted in increased footage per day and reduced tool damage. Prior literature has<br>described improvements in operating practices to manage vibrations(1,2) as a key component of this ROP (rate of penetration)<br>management process. In a parallel work activity, the redesign efforts have provided additional performance improvements of<br>approximately 36% in one drilling application. Dynamic modeling of the BHA has identified the key design changes leading<br>to these improvements. The redesigned BHA has lower calculated vibration indices than the standard BHA.