OTC 16569

Casing Drilling Drill Collars Eliminate Downhole Failures

R.C. Griffin, Grant Prideco, L.L.P.; S. Kamruzzaman, Grant Prideco, L.L.P.; and R.D. Strickler, ConocoPhillips
Copyright 2004, Offshore Technology Conference
This paper was prepared for presentation at the Offshore Technology Conference held in
Houston, Texas, U.S.A., 36 May 2004.
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Abstract
ConocoPhillips was experiencing downhole connection fatigue failures while drilling with 7 in. casing in the Lobo
Trend in South Texas. A 7-5/8 in. casing drilling drill collar, a
heavy wall tubular similar to traditional drill collars, was developed, analyzed and successfully used to eliminate the failures.
Grant Prideco suggested a different string design and developed a higher fatigue resistant connection to be threaded on
7-5/8 in. 47.1 lb/ft (0.625 in. wall) casing. This heavy weight
pipe and connection would be used on the bottom of the string
as drilling with casing drill collars.
Introduction
Casing drilling is utilized to develop several fields in the Lobo
Trend in South Texas for ConocoPhillips. Three areas are
being developed: Northern, Central, and Southern. While all
of the wells to date in the Northern area had been completed
without problems, about one out of every three wells in the
Central and Southern areas were experiencing casing fatigue
failures in the 7 in. 23 lb/ft P-110 casing strings. The type of
connections used in these casing strings were American Petroleum Institute (API) Buttress threaded connections with a
metal insertable torque ring and then Grant Prideco Drilling
With Casing/Coupled (DWC/CTM) threaded connections, both
of which were designed for casing drilling. ConocoPhillips
approached Grant Prideco to find a solution to the problem.
Original String Design
A typical string design used by ConocoPhillips in the Central
and Southern areas was 9-5/8 in. 36.00 lb/ft J-55 surface casing drilled in and set at around 1,500 ft. An intermediate
string of 7 in. 23.00 lb/ft P-110 was drilled in and set at around
8,000 ft. The production casing was 4-1/2 in. 11.60 lb/ft P-

110 and 4-1/2 in. 13.50 lb/ft P-110 drilled in and set at around
10,800 ft. See figure 1.
A wireline retrievable bottom hole assembly (BHA),
which consists of a drill lock assembly, tandem stabilizer,
under reamer, and Poly-crystalline Diamond Compact (PDC)
bit, as well as a motor assembly or rotary assembly, was installed on the bottom of each casing drill string. Figure 2
illustrates the 7 in. Casing Drilling BHA. Because of the
multiple components, the BHA was very stiff compared to the
casing string directly above the profile nipple.
The 7 in. 23.00 lb/ft P-110 connection that was originally
used was an API Buttress connection with an insertable ring to
add torque resistance when the pin ends shouldered against the
ring during make up. The use of this connection in the Northern area proved to be satisfactory. Some failures near the
BHA were noted when this connection was used in the Central
and Southern area. These connections were later changed to
the DWC/C connection because of these failures.
Grant Prideco developed the DWC/C connection specifically for Casing Drilling applications. This threaded and coupled connection uses the API Buttress thread form in combination with a special patented coupling design. The coupling has
a stress relief groove in the center that allows the pin noses to
butt together for more torsional resistance and increases the
fatigue life of the connection.1. See figure 3. However, this
connection also experienced failures near the BHA in the Central and Southern areas.
Since failures occurred in both connections just above the
BHA, an alternative solution was explored.
Well Failures
When failures occurred during casing drilling operations with
the 7 in. intermediate string, a pressure loss, typically around
300 psi, would be noticed. Diagnostic tests would then be
performed on the rig to determine the cause of the pressure
loss. When these tests determined the cause of the pressure
loss to be the casing string, the string of pipe was pulled out of
the hole for inspection.
After several failures, some common occurrences were
noted.
1) The connections had a washed out area in the pipe at the

last engaged thread on the pin, in the imperfect thread area.

See figure 4. The failure location correlates to the failure
locations of previously tested and analyzed casing drilling
connections. See figure 5. An independent failure analysis
was done on some of the failures confirming that the failure
was due to through wall propagation of a fatigue crack.
2) The failure locations on the 7 in. casing strings from each
well were within the first five joints above the profile nipple of
the BHA. This indicated that there is a high cyclical stress
region in the bottom portion of the casing string.
3) All of the failures occurred at nearly the same depth, between 6,000 ft and 7,000 ft.
Fatigue failures result from the combination of two variables, stress levels and number of cycles. Figure 6 shows a
typical Drill Pipe S-N curve2. The number of cycles to fatigue
failure will be low when a connection is under a high stress
range, and, conversely, as the stresses are reduced, the fatigue
life of the connection will increase.
Looking at the similarities of the failures, some changes
were made in an effort to eliminate future problems. The connection designs were changed since all of the failures happened in the connections. The API Buttress connection with
an insertable ring was replaced with DWC/C. It was determined that this change in connection did not resolve the fatigue problem. Either the stresses on the connection were too
high or the number of rotating hours was too high for this type
of connection.
Rotary drilling utilizing a top drive had been used to drill
the wells up to this point. It was decided to drill a well utilizing a downhole motor since fatigue failures occur when either
stresses or number of cycles are too high. This would reduce
the number of cycles that the connection is subjected to. Fatigue failures were still seen at the same depth range even
though the number of cycles was reduced by about 50%.
Out of 23 wells drilled in the Central and Southern areas,
seven strings of the 7 in. 23.00 lb/ft P-110 casing had to be
pulled because of fatigue cracks. The change of connections
and change in drilling procedures did not eliminate the problems.
Failure Evaluation
Many theories were discussed about the possible cause of the
failures. Because of the variation of number of cycles on the
fatigued pipe, one supposition was that washed out areas in the
hole around that depth caused large bending stresses in the
pipe and connection that led to the fatigue failures. Other
theories were based on vibrations created in the 9-5/8 in. surface casing that were transferred throughout the 7 string inducing additional loads on the connections above the profile
nipple.
The consensus was that, regardless of the conditions,
some unexpected downhole loads or fatigue cycles were oc-

OTC 16569

curring to cause the connections to fail. Whether or not these

failures were from bending in washed out areas, the extra fatigue cycles caused from vibrations the casing string experienced while casing drilling, or some other unknown means,
the solution would be to address the high stress region just
above the BHA. The connections that were being used
worked the way they were intended but more fatigue resistance was needed in that section of the casing string.
In a drilling environment, a string of pipe (whether it is
casing or drill pipe) has tension stresses in the upper part of
the string and compression stresses in the lower part of the
string. The transition between the compression and tension is
the neutral point.
Below the neutral point, compression induces bending
stresses in the pipe string. Conventional drill pipe is made up
of a tube and two heavy tool joints on the end. The tube itself
will bend when in compression but the connections will not
because of the heavy tool joint. However, casing drilling connections typically use a threaded and coupled connection with
a run out thread. There is a risk of running this type of connection in cyclical, high compressive bending loads for extended amounts of time. These threaded and coupled connections do not have a mechanism to transition the bending load
away from the connection. Pipe will tend to bend at its weakest point. Using a runout thread form on the pin creates a very
high stress point in the imperfect thread area near the face of
the coupling. This would be the location where the bending
stresses would be the highest.
A conventional drill string design for drill pipe utilizes
drill collars to a point above the neutral point of the string.
Drill collars provide additional stiffness to resist bending
caused by the compression load.
During the drilling of these wells, the weight on bit
(WOB) was approximately 8,000 12,000 lb at the time of the
failures. The weight of the BHA was 3,500 4,000 lb. This
load caused the neutral point of the 7 in. casing drilling string
to be approximately 200 400 ft. from bottom.
It was proposed that the casing drilling string design be
changed to include a larger outside diameter (OD), heavier
walled casing on the bottom of the string to act as casing drilling drill collars.
DWC/DSTM Connection
Grant Prideco developed a connection that was interchangeable with the 7 in. DWC/C connection used on the rest of the
string. This was done to minimize the number of accessories
needed on the rig. The new connection is an integral joint
connection. It incorporates the groove enhancements made in
the DWC/C coupling and was designed with torque shoulders
at both the pin nose and coupling face. See figure 7. The use
of two torque shoulders adds a pre-load to both sides of the
connection. This pre-load reduces the alternating stresses in
the connection thus improving the resistance to fatigue loading. As an added benefit, the double shoulders also increased

OTC 16569

the torsional resistance.

area would be the location of failure in fatigue.

7-5/8 in. 47.1 lb/ft pipe was chosen for the proposed casing drilling drill collar because the pipe OD was similar to the
7 in. coupling OD and could still be accommodated in the hole
and the pipe inside diameter (ID) was very similar to the 7 in.
23 lb/ft pipe ID. The heavy walled 7-5/8 in. pipe was much
stiffer and more resistant to bending and would have a longer
life in the high stress area of the string.

The 7-5/8 in. 47.1 lb/ft DWC/DS connection had a maximum SCF of 3.89 in the pin and 3.18 in the box. Figure 18
and figure 19 show the maximum SCF vs. pipe body mean
stress plots for the first five pin threads and first five box
threads of the DWC/DS connection, respectively. The SCF
for the pin and box on the double shouldered connection is
very similar. The two shoulder design pre-loads the connection to distribute the stresses throughout the connection, which
lowers the peak SCF at the critical sections.

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) was performed to analyze

and compare the fatigue resistance of the DWC/C and
DWC/DS connections. Axisymmetric models of the connections were developed as shown in figure 8 and figure 9 to determine the peak stress under various applied loads. This peak
stress was used to determine the Stress Concentration Factor
(SCF) of the connections. SCF is defined as change of peak
stress in the hot spot thread root area to the change of stress in
the pipe body of the connections.
The ABAQUS non-linear finite element program version
6.2 was used for the evaluation. The finite element model
represents an axisymmetric model of assembled pin and box
of the connections. The models were meshed as shown in Figure 10 with an axisymmetric element CAX4. This element is
quadrilateral and isoparametric. The highest stress concentration occurs around the thread roots, so very fine mesh quality
was ensured in that region. Figure 11 shows a detail of the
mesh density around the thread root. One layer of ABAQUS
shell element SAX1 was used around the thread roots of both
the pin and box. Stress output from shell elements was used
for the SCF calculation. This shell element did not add any
stiffness to the model as the element thickness was very negligible. The material was assumed to be elastic with Modulus
of Elasticity of 30,000 ksi and Poissons Ratio of 0.3. Axial
tension load was applied to the end of the pipe body of the pin.
The tension load was incremented up to 80% of pipe body
yield for the DWC/C model. For the same amount of load, the
DWC/C experiences more stress in the pipe body compared to
the heavier wall DWC/DS, which has more pipe cross sectional area. Figure 12 and 13 shows the Von Mises Equivalent
(VME) stress of DWC/C and DWC/DS connections under
tension load.
The pin and box threads were numbered along the length
of the connections in order to locate the highest stress
concentration on each member of the connection. The
numbering starts near the critical cross sectional area of each
member. See figure 14 and 15.
FEA reveals that the highest stress concentration in the
DWC/C connection occurs in the thread roots of the pin runout threads (location P1). The maximum SCF at location P1 is
8.96. This value is independent of mean pipe stress. The
highest SCF in the box of the threaded and coupled connection
is 1.58 in the first box thread (location B1). The plots showing maximum SCF vs. pipe body mean stress for the DWC/C
connection are shown in figure 16 for the pin and figure 17 for
the box. The large difference in SCF values at the critical
areas of the pin and box members verifies that the pin critical

FEA shows a drastic reduction of SCF values in the double shouldered connection when comparing the 7 in. DWC/C
with 7 5/8 in. DWC/DS. The highest SCF value was reduced
by more than 50% in the pin. The DWC/DS box SCF was
higher than that of the DWC/C box because of the distribution
of the stresses due to the double shouldered design but was
also more than 50% less than the maximum SCF on the
threaded and coupled version.
Revised String Design
ConocoPhillips began running the 7-5/8 in. 47.1 lb/ft
DWC/DS casing drilling drill collars in the Central and Southern wells after review of the FEA. The revised string design is
identical to the original design except for the insertion of the
casing drilling drill collar section. This was the only change
to the string design to verify that the DWC/DS was truly a
solution. Because the 7-5/8 in. Pipe OD and ID are similar to
the connection OD and ID of the 7 in. casing, the hole size,
BHA, and any other accessory that was previously used would
still be applicable. The overall string lengths were not altered
but the 7 in. string now incorporates eight joints of the 7-5/8
in. 47.1 lb/ft P-110 DWC/DS drill collar directly above the
BHA. See figure 20. This design change moved the neutral
point to the 7-5/8 in. casing at 125 220 ft. from bottom. The
eight joints also spanned the five joint area where all of the
field failures had occurred. The use of the double shouldered
connection has been successful in all 11 wells that have been
drilled within the Central and Southern areas where the previous failures happened. The practice of using this new connection has also been incorporated in the Northern area for added
safety factor. To date, a total of 22 wells have been successfully drilled in South Texas using the casing drilling drill collar.
Conclusions
ConocoPhillips' Casing Drilling fatigue failure problems in
South Texas appear to have been eliminated by use of a casing
drilling drill collar designed by Grant Prideco. This heavy
walled casing drilling drill collar would add stability and also
have better fatigue resistance than a threaded and coupled
connection.
Casing drilling drill collars are a necessity in some casing
drilling applications. The use of the drill collars moves the
casing string neutral point to the more stable drill collar section. This eliminates high stresses caused by compressive

OTC 16569

loads in the threaded and coupled connections near the BHA.

Acknowledgements
We would like to express our appreciation to Grant Prideco
and ConocoPhillips management for allowing this information
to be published. We would also like to express our appreciation to Tesco Corporation and T. H. Hill Associates, Inc. for
the use of their graphics.
References
1.

2.

Griffin, R., Evans, E., Tang, W., Warren, T.; Development

and Testing of an Economical casing Connection for use in
Drilling Operations, paper WOCD #0306-03 presented at
the Casing Drilling Technical Conference, Houston, TX,
March 6-7, 2003.
Recommended Practice 7G, Recommended Practice for
Drill Stem Design and Operation Limits, 16th Edition,
API, Dallas, TX, December 1, 1998.

Figure 2 7 Casing Drilling Bottom Hole Assembly

Figures

Surface Casing
9-5/8 in., 36.00 ppf, J-55 BTC

Intermediate Casing
7 in., 23.00 ppf, P-110 BTC and DWC/C

Figure 3 DWC/C Connection

Production Casing
4-1/2 in., 11.60 and 13.50 ppf, P-110 DWC/C

Figure 1 Original Casing Drilling Lobo Well Schematic

OTC 16569

Figure 4 Typical Field Pin Fatigue Failure

Figure 6 Typical S-N Curve

Figure 5 Typical Lab Tested Pin Fatigue Failure

Figure 7 DWC/DS Connection

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Figure 8 DWC/C FEA Line Model

Figure 13 VME Stress Pattern of DWC/DS

Figure 9 DWC/DS FEA Line Model

Figure 10 Mesh of FEA Model

Figure 14 Thread Numbering in DWC/C Model

Figure 15 Thread Numbering in DWC/DS Model

Figure 11 Typical Mesh Detail in Thread

Figure 16 DWC/C Pin SCF vs. PB Mean Stress

Figure 12 VME Stress Pattern of DWC/C

OTC 16569

Surface Casing
9-5/8 in., 36.00 ppf, J-55 BTC

Figure 17 DWC/C Box SCF vs. PB Mean Stress

Intermediate Casing
7 in., 23.00 ppf, P-110 DWC/C

Intermediate Casing
7-5/8 in., 47.10 ppf, P-110 DWC/DS
(8 Joints)

Production Casing
4-1/2 in., 11.60 and 13.50 ppf, P-110 DWC/C

Figure 20 Revised Casing Drilling Lobo Well Schematic

Figure 18 DWC/DS Pin SCF vs. PB Mean Stress

Figure 19 DWC/DS Box SCF vs. PB Mean Stress