The effect of stabilizer on the cleaning of the annulus in an experimental flow loop with the construction of its simulated model

The general use of the stabilizer is in build, hold and drop in directional drilling. In this paper, it was tried to use it for hole cleaning study. Some experimental tests were performed by a closed flow loop to investigate the effect of the presence of drilling stabilizer in different positions of BHA and different hole inclinations. To achieve this goal, a stabilizer with four straight blades was designed and made in the experimental scale. Some experiments were performed with installing the stabilizer in two different positions of BHA (Near Bit and Far from Bit) in different hole inclinations. Finally, it was tried to construct a predicting model in FLUENT software to study the behavior of cuttings along the annulus in the presence of a stabilizer in near bit condition. According to the results, the presence of a drilling stabilizer has a significant effect on improving the cutting transport and subsequently hole cleaning process in critical inclinations.