In engineering, fluid flow and programming is a big deal. A thorough understanding of fluid flow fundamentals is a requirement for any mechanical engineer. Whether your sizing a pump for a pipeline, designing a heat exchanger, or trying to alleviate bottlenecks in pipeline gathering systems, fluid flow shows up in many cases in our profession/career. …
Thus far, we have applied fundamental formulas to determine the stresses in different structural members neglecting high stress regions. In reality, components contain shoulders, rounds, holes, grooves, ect. When such features are present, a highly localized stress region exists. An analyst/structural engineer needs to account for these features because in some cases, the stresses can …
Stress Concentration Factors: A Fundamental Example Read More »
The stress analysis of a tapered or varying cross section beam is slightly different than a uniform beam when it comes to bending stress analysis. This is because the area moment of inertia varies along the length of the beam. However that is really the only difference. The same solid mechanics and statics fundamentals still …
Anyone that has done finite element analysis has been exposed to stiffness matrices. Each term in a stiffness matrix represents the structures ability to resist deformations under different types of loads. Types of deformations that are considered include 1) nodal displacements and 2) nodal rotations if your talking about FEA. But the concept still applies …
A beam is considered indeterminate if there a more unknowns than equilibrium equations. When this occurs, one can feel at a loss at what to do or how to proceed. But it really is simple and I am going to provide an example to show you how easy it is. We often classify indeterminate beams …
Indeterminate Beam Structures to the First Degree Read More »
A dry gas reservoir is a reservoir that contains only gas. Further, the produced fluid is only gas, i.e. no liquid condensate drops out at the surface. Once again, to produce the material balance equation for a dry gas reservoir, we must consider the initial state and current state of the reservoir. At the same …
In college we focus on finding the internal loads of static systems. We rarely are asked to find the internal loads of a dynamic system. It may seem daunting at first and one may question where to start. However it is really simple and we actually build onto the static approach. Consider the following problem: …
Structural Analysis Of Systems under Inertial Loads Read More »
A wet gas reservoir is a reservoir that contains only gas. However as the gas rises to the surface, liquid drops out due to a decrease in temperature. Once again, to produce the material balance equation for a wet gas reservoir, we must consider the initial state and current state of the reservoir. In the …
A gas condensate reservoir is a reservoir that drops out liquid condensate in the reservoir as the reservoir falls below the dew point pressure. Once again, to produce the material balance equation for a gas condensate reservoir, we must consider the initial state and current state of the reservoir. In the back of our mind …
A saturated reservoir is a reservoir where the reservoir pressure has fallen below the bubble point pressure line. Black oil and volatile oil reservoirs exhibit saturated reservoir behavior, thus their material balance derivations are identical. Once again, to evaluate any material balance situation, we must consider the initial state and current state of the reservoir. …
If one understands thermodynamic states, one can get really good at deriving material balance relationships for different reservoirs. It’s simple, your first state is initial reservoir pressure and your second state is a pressure below reservoir pressure. For every material balance situation you are evaluating the reservoir at states during the depletion process. Then you …
The reservoir can produce different types of fluids. Each different fluid type has characteristics that petroleum engineers need to be aware of in order to produce the reservoir efficiently. Generally the reservoir fluid types are classified into 5 separate categories from a phase diagram. They are: Black Oil Volatile Oil Gas Condensate Wet Gas Dry …