Designing a Fully Customizable Low Pressure, High-Speed Rotating Reamer Shoe System for Tubular Deployment

Conventional reamer shoes are either mechanical or hydraulically actuated. Mechanical systems include products that require the entire casing, liner, or completion string to be rotated from the surface by applying rotary action on the string. This operation may result in extremely high torque requirements upon the entire tubular running system. Other mechanical systems include auto-correcting, weight-actuated, and j-slot key-based mechanisms. Mechanical systems tend to have little or no torque output unless where string rotation is introduced. Hydraulically actuated reamer shoe systems include a turbine, Moineau pump, or an internal jetting drive system. The internal jetting and turbine drive systems create high rotary speeds with low to medium torque outputs. The inverse Moineau pump system, commonly known as positive displacement motors has a different mechanism similar to having two helical gears with one gear having one additional thread, referred to as lobes. Turbine and positive displacement motors are both referred to as mud/down-hole motors in a broader sense. Positive displacement motors are known for lower rotary speeds compared to turbine motors and, therefore, better suited for a wide variety of drilling applications. This paper examines the major design considerations for changes to a high hydraulically actuated reamers shoes system and provides case histories and the value to operations where these tools have been deployed.