Scale effect in volumetric sand production

摘要

The scale effect of the hole size on the onset and development of sand production was studied in a series of sand production tests with fluid flow on outcrop sandstone specimens. The onset of sand production was shown to vary inversely with hole size, in agreement with established results. The rate of produced sand was dependent on the hole size only for some types of rock. This dependency is explained on the basis of the cavity geometry and area of potential erosion for the different sandstone classes. For brittle sandstones showing slit-like erosion pathways, hole size dependency is negligible, while for sandstones where breakouts are the main source of sand production, sand rate scales roughly as the square of the hole size.