Response characteristics of drill-string guided wave in downhole acoustic telemetry

Abstract

Modeling of the drill-string acoustic channel has long been an important topic in downhole telemetry. The propagation of drill-string guided waves in the borehole contains excitation, attenuation, and mode conversion issues that have not been considered by existing modeling methods. In this paper, we formulate a hybrid modeling method to investigate the response characteristics of the fundamental-mode drill-string wave in various borehole environments. This hybrid method provides channel functions, including transmitting and receiving deployments, periodicity of the structure, and formation property changes. The essential physics of the drill-string wave propagation is captured with a 1-D model. The analytical solutions of the wavefield in multilayered cylindrical structures are introduced into a propagation matrix to express drill-string-wave interactions with the borehole environments. The effectiveness of the proposed method is confirmed through comparison with the finite-difference method. In addition, by designing numerical models, we investigate the conversion effect of the drill-string wave at the tool joint. We demonstrate that the conversion intensity of the drill-string wave is positively correlated not only with the cross-sectional area of the tool joint but also with the wave impedance of the outer formation. Hard formation outside the borehole reduces the energy leakage while intensifying the conversion of drill-string waves to Stoneley waves, and the opposite is true for the drill string in an infinite fluid. The converted Stoneley waves interfere with the drill-string waves, resulting in variations of bandgap distribution, which challenges the reliability of the data transmission.