• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.107-116
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• 2017

When drilling operation is being performed, many physical and chemical changes are occurred near wellbore. To handle various changes of well condition and keep drilling process safe, additives of bulk, such as bentonite for increasing density of drilling mud, barite for increasing viscosity of drilling mud, polymer for chemical control, or surfactant, are added into drilling mud through a mud shear mixer. Because the achievement of the required material property through mud mixing system is essential to stabilize drilling system, it is of importance to analyze multi-phase flow during mud mixing process, which is directly related to increase mixing performance of the system and guarantee the safety of the whole drilling system. In this study, a series of liquid-solid flow simulation based on a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are performed with comparing to solid concentration in experiment by Gilles et al. [2004] to understand the characteristics of liquid-solid mixing in a mud shear mixer. And then, the simulation-based design of shear mixer are carried out to improve mixing performance in a mud handling system.