Boreholes are usually drilled through fluid-saturated formations. The conventional elastic solutions for boreholes cannot treat appropriately the coupling effects between the rock matrix deformation and pore fluid flow. These effects are fully captured by the application of poroelasticity to the borehole problems. This paper presents the software, PBORE-3D for Windows, which is capable of performing stability analyses of boreholes taking into consideration the fully coupled effects between the rock matrix and pore fluid using recently-developed poroelastic borehole models. PBORE-3D can perform analyses of stress/pore pressure, formation failure, and mud weight design; the input can be entered conveniently and results can be displayed graphically through the interfaces. Various features and user-friendly environments of PBORE-3D are also demonstrated through examples.

Keywords:
far-field stress gradient, upstream oil & gas, poroelastic model, failure analysis, reservoir characterization, presentation, stability analysis, coupling, critical mud weight, spe 54013
Subjects:
Wellbore Design, Reservoir Characterization, Wellbore integrity, Reservoir geomechanics
Copyright 1999, Society of Petroleum Engineers
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