Experimental Study On Proppant Settling In Narrow Gap

This study presents results of an experimental study of the micromechanical proppant behavior during settling process.This analysis will help us to better understand dynamics of particle interactions in these phase slurry on a small particle size scale,representing proppant settling in narrow hydraulic fractures.For this study the Reynolds number and settling velocity of particles in Power-Law fluids is analyzed as his importance and application industrially.They are very few developed studies on the settling behavior of spherical particles in non-Newtonian fluids.The Phantom Camera Control Software was used for analyzing the individual velocities of single particle in viscous Newtonian and Non-Newtonian fluidFor the success of this experiments many tests has been conducted evolving those parameters consistency index,flow behavior,density of the fluid and particle and different particle diameters.The effects of particle and the liquid characteristics were considered in this equation.In addition,an explicit settling velocity is proposed by correlating the dimensionless settling velocity,dimensionless particle diameter,and settling orientation.Finally,we will illustrate a method to calculate the settling velocity in Power-Law fluids by using an explicit settling velocity equation with known particle and fluid properties.The results from this experimental study indicate dependency of settling velocity on particle size,size of the Gap and type of liquid and difference between proppant density,as well as the dependency of different size of particles.The measured results,including vertical velocities and displacement vectors of singular particle,were the relationship with previous research will be found and analyzed.It can be seen that the changes on density on the liquid influence on the single particle velocity and the same velocity changes due to density of the particle.The wall has it effects too,when a particle is settling near the wall the velocity is relatively smaller than the particle far.