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This thesis is concerned with the development of test techniques for evaluating the fluid borne noise characteristics of components found in hydraulic systems; in particular the source impedance and source flow of positive displacement pumps. A number of proposals for measuring the fluid borne noise generation potential of positive displacement pumps are critically reviewed. Particular attention is paid to the high impedance pipe technique which is to be proposed as a British Standard. An apparently simple method of obtaining the source characteristics of a pump using only two transducers is shown to have serious drawbacks due to magnified errors at resonant line length conditions. A computer based scheme, capable of predicting the source and termination characteristics of a pump-pipeline-termination system is developed. The scheme is iterative and based on fitting the surface of least squares error through a series of experimental pressure readings. The technique requires the pressure ripple to be measured at a number of points along a pipeline and for a series of different pipe lengths. A special rig has been designed and built to facilitate the data acquisition. Using the technique, the source flow and source impedance characteristics of a number of axial piston and gear pumps are examined. The results obtained show very good agreement with theory and clearly demonstrate the effects of pressure and speed on the source flow. The impedance of several terminations are also predicted. For an expansion chamber the predicted entry impedance is shown to deviate from simple theory and this is attributed to vibration of the chamber. The impedances of restrictor and relief valves are shown to be quite complicated freqeuncy dependent functions and it is demonstrated that significant errors in pressure ripple prediction may result from the use of over-simplified models.

The multitude of data formats for storing river network, geometry, and flow data presents a challenge for the sharing of information both internally between software applications and externally between agencies. An analysis of existing software applications and data models used for one-dimensional hydraulic modelling of river systems was performed. The commonalities and differences between the model inputs were identified in order to determine the necessary characteristics of a common transfer language. A prototype transfer language was developed using Unified Modeling Language (UML) and implemented as an Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema. This prototype is intended to serve as a first step towards developing an international open standard to facilitate the sharing of hydraulic data. This work was performed in cooperation with the Consortium of Universities for the Advancement of Hydrologic Science, Inc. (CUAHSI) and the Open Geospatial Consortium/World Meteorological Organisation Hydrology Domain Working Group. / text

Most available data from shale production zones tends to point towards the presence of complex hydraulic fracture networks, especially in the Barnett and Marcellus formations. Representing these complex hydraulic fracture networks in reservoir simulators while incorporating the geo-mechanical parameters and fracture apertures is a challenge. In our work we developed a fracture to production simulation workflow using complex hydraulic fracture propagation model and a commercial reservoir simulator. The workflow was applied and validated using geological, stimulation and production data from the Marcellus shale. For validation, we used published data from a 5200 ft. long horizontal well drilled in the lower Marcellus. There were 14 fracturing stages with micro-seismic data and an available production history of 9 months. Complex hydraulic fractures simulations provided the fracture network geometry and aperture distributions as the output, which were up-scaled to grid block porosity and permeability values and imported into a reservoir model for production simulation and history match. The approach of using large grid blocks with conductivity adjustment to represent hydraulic fractures in a reservoir simulator which has been employed in this workflow was validated by comparing with published numerical and analytical solutions. Our results for history match were found to be in reasonable agreement with published results. The incorporation of apertures, complexity and geo-mechanics into reservoir models through this workflow reduces uncertainty in reservoir simulation of shale plays and leads to more realistic production forecasting. The workflow was utilized to study the effect of fracture conductivity damage on production. Homogenous and heterogeneous damage cases were considered. Capillary pressures, determined using empirical relationships and experimental data, were studied using the fracture to production workflow. Assuming homogenous instead of heterogeneous permeability damage in reservoir simulations was shown to have a significant impact on production forecasting, overestimating production by 70% or more over the course of two years. Capillary pressure however was less significant and ignoring capillary pressure in damaged hydraulic fractures led to only 3% difference in production in even the most damaged cases. / text

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