Practical aspects of water hammer effect analysis for determining friction coefficient of hydraulic fracturing fluid in the pipe and in the perforation zone

Water hammer (hammer effect) is an oscillation of wellhead and bottomhole pressure that occurs after pump shutdown or a sudden change in fluid flow velocity in the wellbore during hydraulic fracturing operations. Water hammer analysis during the hydraulic fracturing is typically used to assess wellbore-fracture communication, to localize the location of the fracture, and to attempt to evaluate the fracture geometry and mechanical properties. The objective of the work is to model water hammer oscillations as acoustic waves in the wellbore to solve practical problems of actual pressure data analysis. The goal is to develop a methodology for estimating frictional pressure losses in tubing and perforations. This paper demonstrates how high-frequency actual pressure data of the first negative phase of water hammer can be used to determine the propagation velocity of water hammer waves, the distance from the wellhead to the fracture, and frictional pressure losses in the tubing and perforations. The proposed method is implemented in the RN-GRID hydraulic fracturing simulator. Given the pumps were stopped quickly enough to form clear water hammer wave fronts, the estimate of the hydraulic friction coefficient obtained using the method proposed, agrees well with the actual data. The paper also includes the discussing of the limitations of the method and the challenges of water hammer data analysis in general, and examines the potential future applications for online bottomhole pressure estimation during the injection.

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