IP Library Granted Patent US 12,366,842
Granted Patent B2
US 12,366,842 · App. 17/631,373 · Granted Jul 22, 2025

System and method for design of rapid excavating and wear-resistant drill bits

Inventors: Fred C. Higgs, III (Houston, TX); Prathamesh S. Desai (Houston, TX)
Assignee: William Marsh Rice University
G05B19/4099B33Y50/00E21B10/42E21B49/00E21B2200/20G05B2219/49023
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Quick Facts
Patent No.
US 12,366,842
App. No.
17/631,373
Granted
Jul 22, 2025
Kind
B2
Abstract

A method for designing lithology-specific drill bits. The method creates an experimentally verified multiphysics model to predict drilling into site-specific rock formations. A physics-based, Eulerian-Lagrangian computational modeling framework to predict particle flow and tribological phenomena. The method uses this multiphysics model to generate virtual drilling data and then generates a machine learning enabled surrogate model of the physics-based model using the data from virtual drilling to provide design charts for drill bits.

Claims (23)

1. A method for designing rock-specific drill bits for a drilling site, comprising:

characterizing lithology of rock encountered at said drill site;

using a point load strength test and usage of the data from the point load strength test to calibrate a multiphysics virtual rock, having similar lithological behavior to the rock encountered at the drill site;

performing experimental benchtop rock drilling, said benchtop drilling simulating high pressure and high temperature conditions encountered at said drilling site;

performing virtual drilling on said multi-physics virtual rock;

comparing results of said virtual drilling with results of said experimental benchtop rock drilling;

training and testing machine learning regression algorithms to generate lithology-specific drill bit design charts, wherein the training and testing utilize the comparative results from the virtual drilling and experimental benchtop rock drilling.

2. The method for designing rock-specific drill bits according to claim 1 , further comprising:

3-D printing a drill bit in accordance with said drill bit design chart.

3. The method for designing rock-specific drill bits according to claim 2 , further comprising:

using said drill bit chart as a lookup chart for drill scheduling software.

4. The method for designing rock-specific drill bits according to claim 1 , further comprising:

using said drill bit chart as a lookup chart for drill scheduling software.

5. The method for designing rock-specific drill bits according to claim 1 , further wherein said performing virtual drilling on said multi-physics virtual rock comprises course sampling by varying the number, angle, orientation and placement of the cutters.

6. A method for designing lithology-specific drill bits comprising:

generating an experimentally verified multiphysics model of a drill site to predict drilling into site-specific rock formations, the multiphysics model using a physics-based, Eulerian-Lagrangian computational modeling framework to predict particle flow and tribological phenomena at the drill site;

generating virtual drilling data associated with the drill site using the multiphysics model;

generating a machine learning enabled surrogate model of the multiphysics model of the drill site using the generated virtual drilling data;

generating a drill bit design chart using said machine learning enabled surrogate model;

using said drill bit chart as a lookup chart for drill scheduling software; and manufacturing a drill bit in accordance with said drill bit design chart.

7. The method for designing lithology-specific drill bits according to claim 6 , further comprising:

3-D printing a drill bit in accordance with said drill bit design chart.

8. The method for designing lithology-specific drill bits according to claim 6 , wherein the machine learning enabled surrogate model comprises a multi-layer neural network.

Continuity (2)
Provisional Application 62880381 · Jul 30, 2019
Related Publication 20220334552A1 · Oct 20, 2022
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