As shale gas exploration and development in the Sichuan Basin progressively advances into deeper formations, the formation temperature and pressure become higher, the horizontal sections grow longer, and the operational pressures increase significantly. Consequently, there has been a notable rise in the number of casing deformation wells, and the degree of casing deformation is becoming more and more serious. Traditional dissolvable bridge plugs often encounter obstruction and sticking issues when running in casing deformation wells due to the limitation of their outside diameter, resulting in difficulties in smoothly lowering them to the target section and affecting normal staged fracturing operations. To address this issue, a spiral anchoring mechanism was designed, a finite element model of small-diameter dissolvable bridge plug + spiral slip + casing was established, and numerical simulation analysis and laboratory validation were conducted on the pitch, number of turns and thread orientation of the spiral slip. The study results show that as the pitch and number of turns of the spiral slip increase, the maximum anchoring force of the spiral slip shows a downward trend. The pitch of spiral slip is recommended to be 40 mm, and the number of turns of spiral slip is recommended to be 1. Meanwhile, when the thread orientation of the spiral slip is opposite to that of the spiral expansion cone, the anchoring performance of the ultra-small diameter dissolvable bridge plug is better. The maximum anchoring force of the spiral slip reaches 503.2 kN, meeting the requirements of staged fracturing in casing deformation wells where small-diameter anchoring in large annulus is needed. The conclusions drawn provide references for the design of ultra-small diameter dissolvable bridge plugs.
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