Analytical Model for Seal Contact Pressure

Swellable elastomers are used for zonal isolation and as an alternate to cementing is a new approach, resulting in significant reduction in time, cost, and weight. Very large strains, flexibility, resilience, and durability are their special features. Performance analysis is important design improvement and appropriate selection of swell packers. Experimental evaluation of swelling-elastomer seal performance can be very costly, and is not even possible in many cases. Numerical simulations (Chapters 8 and 9) can be more convenient, but computational effort and cost can be high. Development of closed-form (analytical) solutions is presented in this chapter to estimate the variation of contact pressure along the length of the elastomer seal. Major relevant parameters are properties of the material elastomer, seal configuration and size, magnitude of seal compression, and differential pressure across the seal. Numerical (finite element) modeling and simulation is also performed. There was good conformity between analytical and simulation results, validating the soundness of the analytical solution, and providing assurance that it can reliably predict the sealing response of the elastomer. A comprehensive parametric study is then conducted to assess seal performance while varying different key factors. Properties of the elastomer material (as it swells with exposure time) are required to run the analytical and the FE models. A large set of experiments were therefore designed and conducted to evaluate mechanical properties (E, G, K, and v) of the elastomer with gradual swelling (Chapters 3 and 7)