Application of inertial navigation to wellbore positional surveying
There is an increasing need for higher accuracy in wellbore directional and positional surveying than is currently available using conventional techniques. Among the factors contributing to this need are closed interspacing of wells particularly from offshore platforms, deeper and more highly deviated wells, smaller target formations and the requirement for rapid drilling of relief wells in the case of blowouts. The application of inertial navigation system (INS) of suitable size and cost for this type of application is not inherently accurate enough to offer significant improvements in well-surveying accuracy. Techniques to improve accuracy are, in general, based on the fact that the dynamics associated with the propagation of the navigator errors are very well known. Inertial systems are routinely aided using external data from a number of sources. Such aiding may take the form of an external position or velocity measurement which is compared to the position or velocity indicated by the navigator. Kalman filter theory provides a convenient formulation for generation of a minimum variance estimate of the state vector of a linear system. The theory may be extended to the nonlinear case through the use of linearization about a state trajectory. This approach is currently seeing wide use in aiding of inertial navigation systems. The approach proposed here would use the Kalman filter formulation for estimation of the INS errors and updating of the navigator. This formulation also provides a structure for estimation of various instrument parameters which should improve system performance.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Labs., Albuquerque, NM (USA)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-76DP00789
- OSTI ID:
- 5313585
- Report Number(s):
- SAND-80-0913; ON: DE82018577
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: Portions of document are illegible
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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