No abstract

In many cases of oil production, it becomes necessary to activate wells by a bottomhole pump to maintain sufficient flowrates to guarantee the profitability of production. A careful selection must be made among different processes, because the poor choice of an activation system could result in problems of reliability or inefficiency, leading to excessive operating costs. The OPUS (Optimal Pumping Unit Search) system, by enabling a rational approach to various aspects of process selection, helps the oil producer to find the processes best suited to the field case considered. processes best suited to the field case considered. On the one hand, OPUS integrates an expert system that synthesizes all the knowledge acquired on different systems such as sucker-rod pumps or progressive cavity pumps, hydraulic piston or jet pumps, submersible electric pumps or gas-lift. This knowledge base is used by an inference engine to make an optimum choice after analyzing all the technical and economic criteria. On the other hand, OPUS controls the use of technical sizing programs that support two-phase flows, and economic programs that support two-phase flows, and economic programs that estimate the unit cost per barrel produced programs that estimate the unit cost per barrel produced with the aid of the processes chosen. This system is now in its industrial operational phase and is successfully being used in various projects phase and is successfully being used in various projects proving its qualities of flexibility and rapidity. proving its qualities of flexibility and rapidity Introduction The very suggestive picture of a flowing well producing thousands of barrels of crude oil all by itself is producing thousands of barrels of crude oil all by itself is rarely found in reality, and hides the general situation where assistance must be used to maintain a sufficient flowrate to guarantee the profitability of production. Among possible solutions such as fracturing or acidizing, infill drilling or water flooding, the one consisting in installing a downhole pump appears to be one of the most direct and effective. In addition this last technique can be implemented in combination with the solutions mentioned above. The Institut Francais du Petrole is carrying out research in this field, including the OPUS project. The aim of this project is to study the entire production cycle, from the downhole pumping process to the storage equipment. It has led to the development of an integrated assistance system for selecting the activation processes best suited to a given field. The system is organized around an expert system and a software for technical and economic evaluation. After a short description of the mock-ups that were built in successive stages, this paper describes the expert system and its environment, gives a typical example of its use, and then presents the new ways in which it is now being implemented. P. 37

KurzfassungSeit dem Jahr 2001 wird an der Stiftung Institut für Werkstofftechnik Bremen (IWT) ein neues endwärmebehandlungsfreies Verfahren zur Herstellung von randschichtgehärteten Stahlbauteilen erforscht. Bei diesem Verfahren wird die Randschichthärtung durch eine mechanisch induzierte martensitische Phasenumwandlung in die Fertigungslinie integriert. Neben einer deutlichen Verkürzung der Produktionsdauer wird die lokale Härtung von Funktionsflächen eines Bauteils ermöglicht. Zudem kommt es durch die Einsparung einer abschlieβenden Wärmebehandlung zu einer signifikanten Reduzierung des Energieverbrauchs und der damit verbundenen CO2-Emission.Um eine spannungs- bzw. dehnungsinduzierte martensitische Phasenumwandlung aufgrund von rein mechanischen Effekten zu ermöglichen, wird zunächst ein bei Raumtemperatur metastabiles austenitisches Gefüge hergestellt. Dieser Werkstoffzustand soll so stabil sein, dass eine spanende Bearbeitung keine ausgedehnte martensitische Phasenumwand-lung auslöst und das Werkstück somit noch “weich” bearbeitet werden kann. In einem anschlieβenden mechanischen Verfahren, wie z. B. einem Festwalzprozess, soll die auf die Werkstückoberfläche ausgeübte Pressung so weit gesteigert werden, dass die zur martensitischen Umwandlung des Austenits benötigte Spannung in der Bauteilrandzone erreicht wird.

Current trends towards ‘downsizing’ of rolling bearings result in higher demands on the product properties with respect to higher load carrying capacity and resistance to rolling contact fatigue. The objective to further improve the product performance is a challenge, especially considering the high quality standard of modern bearing steels. Heat treatment and specifically quenching are important for producing the desired product properties and therefore further development of these processes is considered relevant for future generation products. To minimize the amount of testing, computer simulations of the effects from heat treatment processes on the resulting product properties are increasingly used as a development tool. This presentation describes work performed to simulate two different quenching cycles, quenching in oil and quenching in salt, applied during through hardening treatments of SAE 52100 bearing steel, in order to understand and predict the hardening process with respect to phase transformations and residual stress generation.

Opus is a sof'hvare package,fiw selecting activation processes that are the best mited,fiw a hydrocarbon field. It integrates an expert system to manage what is known in the field and to organise the application qf a set of' algorithmic programs for making tL,c.hnic,o-ri.ononiic, evaluations. This article gives a detailed description of the expert system part as well as an esample qf how the complete system is used.