Boring or penetrating the earth – With means to simultaneously feed and rotate tool from a...
Patent
1986-06-26
1988-04-05
Leppink, James A.
Boring or penetrating the earth
With means to simultaneously feed and rotate tool from a...
166 77, 173145, 175162, 175195, 175203, 226173, E21B 302, E21B 1908
Patent
active
047352701
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
The subject of this invention is a pipe stem driving apparatus, especially for the execution of continuously operational deep drilling, by means of which penetration into the solid mass of the earth, for the purpose of mining or study of the earth core, for example, or the discovery and production of liquid and gaseous fuels, can be carried out considerably faster and more expeditiously than with presently known apparatuses.
Known drilling apparatus, i.e. rotary drilling equipment, generally operates in a manner such that the drill pipe column or drill string, which is held together by pipe connectors and rotated axially, is provided at its bottom end with wing-, roller-, or diamond-type drill heads, and is provided at its upper end with fittings through which high pressure flushing fluid (drilling mud) is forced into the well in order to raise up to the surface the cuttings produced by the drilling. The elevation and suspension of the pipe string is manipulated by a lifting hook, placed in the crown section of the drilling tower. Rotation of the drill string is achieved by means of a turntable, with the aid of a four or six sided sectional rotating rod, screwed into the upper pipe of the drill string.
With the conventional rotary drilling apparatus, after every drill pipe feed, that is when the pipe string is sunk into the well by one pipe length, the drilling has to stop, the rotatry rod must be disconnected, the flushing fluid fitting removed. This enables a new section of pipe to be screwed onto the upper end of the pipe string, after which the rotating rod and the mud fitting are reconnected, and drilling proceeds. The drilling process with such apparatus is relatively inefficient, because the drilling operation has to be phased in steps, i.e. drilling phases followed by stoppage phases, during which additional sections of the pipe are connected.
In some rotary drilling apparatuses, the four or six sided rotating rod is eliminated, and the pipe string is driven by a drill chuck-type of clamping mechanism. Operations with this equipment are nevertheless phased, since drilling must be interrupted for the clamping mechanism to travel upwardly to obtain a new grip on the string. In addition, drilling has to stop while a new pipe is clamped in place. Moreover, apparatuses of this type are unsuitable for high powered transmission because of any relatively short area clamping mechanism. In general, these mechanisms are suitable only for smaller sized and relatively light weight drill strings. In some cases they are suitable only to a depth of about ten meters.
Rotary swivel head mechanisms are also known, which make unnecessary the use of the drilling rod, with rotation of the pipe string being achieved with the aid of a hydromotor. This solution also only partly eliminates the so-called phased operation, since the drilling of the well necessarily will be interrupted during the attachment of each pipe section. In addition, a fundamental handicap of this approach is that, because of its structural arrangement, it is useable only for drillings of relatively shallow depth.
In cases of drilling to great depth, the disadvantages of the apparatuses requiring considerable interruptions in the drilling processes become very apparent. Where there is wear or breakage at great depth, for example, a change of the drill head requires the total length of the pipe string to be taken out and replaced, section by section.
When drilling at depth of several kilometers, in extremely hard layers and in adverse conditions, it may be necessary to change the drill head 200-300 times, with the dismantling and rebuilding of the drill string being required in each instance. An improvement in the foregoing apparatuses is represented by U.S. Pat. No. 3,724,567, in which the drill head can be raised and lowered without dismantling the entire pipe string. The pipe string is laid out on an arc-shaped rail structure, by means of a trolley which is situated next to the drilling tower. Rotating of the pipe string is executed by means of a rot
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patent: 4429753 (1984-02-01), Cushman
patent: 4431063 (1984-02-01), Dressel et al.
patent: 4515220 (1985-05-01), Sizer et al.
Dang Hoang C.
Leppink James A.
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