Petroleum 1 (2015) 40e45

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Original article

Conned compressive strength model of rock for

drilling optimization
Xiangchao Shi a, *, Yingfeng Meng a, Gao Li a, Jiaxue Li b, Zuwen Tao a, Shandong Wei a
a
b

State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and Exploitation, Southwest Petroleum University, Chengdu, China
Tarim Oileld CNPC, Korla, Xinjiang, China

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 29 January 2015
Received in revised form
15 March 2015
Accepted 16 March 2015

The conned compressive strength (CCS) plays a vital role in drilling optimization. On the basis of
Jizba's experimental results, a new CCS model considering the effects of the porosity and nonlinear
characteristics with increasing conning pressure has been developed. Because the conning
pressure plays a fundamental role in determining the CCS of bottom-hole rock and because the
theory of Terzaghi's effective stress principle is founded upon soil mechanics, which is not suitable
for calculating the conning pressure in rock mechanics, the double effective stress theory, which
treats the porosity as a weighting factor of the formation pore pressure, is adopted in this study. The
new CCS model combined with the mechanical specic energy equation is employed to optimize
the drilling parameters in two practical wells located in Sichuan basin, China, and the calculated
results show that they can be used to identify the inefcient drilling situations of underbalanced
drilling (UBD) and overbalanced drilling (OBD).
Copyright 2015, Southwest Petroleum University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on
behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND
license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

Keywords:
Conned compressive strength
Drilling optimization
Rate of penetration
Mechanical specic energy

1. Introduction
The conned compressive strength (CCS) is one of the most
important parameters for drilling optimization, bit selection, and
prediction for the rate of penetration (ROP). A large number of
ROP models presented in the literature have considered the effect of the rock strength on ROP such as Bourgoyne and Young's
model [1], the roller-cone-bit model presented by Warren [2],
and Cunningham's ROP model [3]. In addition, Teale [4] introduced the concept of the minimum specic energy and derived
the specic energy equation for rotary drilling. He concluded
that drilling attains the highest performance when the specic
energy approaches, or is approximately equal to, the compressive strength of the rock to be drilled. Then, the concept of the

* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: sxcdream@163.com (X. Shi).
Peer review under responsibility of Southwest Petroleum University.

Production and Hosting by Elsevier on behalf of KeAi

CCS of rock and the specic energy are employed extensively to

optimize the drilling parameters and to assess the bit performance [5e10].
The uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) has been used
widely for drilling optimization and ROP prediction for a long
time before some drill-bit experts realized that the use of UCS is
somewhat problematic because the apparent strength of the
rock in the downhole is apparently different from Ref. UCS
[6,11e13]. Some researchers discovered that the bit performance
is greatly inuenced by the differential pressure which is dened
as the difference between the borehole and pore pressures. After
conducting a laboratory test, they found that the rock strength
increases as the differential pressure increases, and ROP decreases as the borehole pressure increases [14e18]. Considering
the factors above, Rampersad [11] employed a power function in
his CCS model to describe the relationship between the rock
strength and the conning pressure, and Caicedo [6,13] proposed
a CCS model based on the Terzaghi effective stress principle and
MohreCoulomb strength theory. The models proposed by the
scholars above have a signicant effect on engineering, but the
lack of consideration of the inuence of the porosity on the rock
strength and the inapplicability of the Terzaghi effective stress
principle to rock limit the utility of these models.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.petlm.2015.03.002
2405-6561/Copyright 2015, Southwest Petroleum University. Production and hosting by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of KeAi Communications Co., Ltd. This is an open
access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).

X. Shi et al. / Petroleum 1 (2015) 40e45

41

Fig. 1. Fitting curves of the strength and conning pressure for different rock types.

In this paper, a new CCS model is proposed that considers the

effects of the porosity and the nonlinear characteristics of the
compressive strength as the conning pressure is increased.
Moreover, the double effective stress theory is suggested to
calculate the conning pressure of the bottom hole.
2. Review of classical CCS models for drilling optimization
The most widely used CCS model is based on the linear rock
strength criterion expressed as follows:

s1 Q Ks3

(1)

where K and Q are the parameters of the material, s1 is the CCS,

and s3 is the minimum principal stress.
On the basis of this criterion, Caicedo [6] proposed a model to
calculate the rock strength at the bottom of a well, which is
expressed as






s1 UCS Ph  Pp 2 Ph  Pp sin


4
1  sin 4

(2)

where 4 is the rock angle of internal friction, Pp is the pore

pressure, and Ph is the mud column pressure.
The linear relationship between the maximum and minimum
principal stresses of rock has been widely used in engineering,
but it cannot be applied to describe the nonlinear behavior
detected by many researchers. As shown in Fig. 1 [19], the tting
results indicate that the strength growth rate decreases as the
conning pressure increases; thus, a nonlinear model is available
to describe the relationship between the rock strength and the
conning pressure.
3. A new CCS model
The porosity of rock not only has a signicant inuence on the
elasticity parameters but also plays an important role in the rock
strength. The load-bearing capacity of a rock sample changes as

the porosity changes. Nur et al. [20] presented the concept of

critical porosity and found that the skeleton barely has any signicant carrying capacity when the porosity is greater than the
critical porosity, and the uid is responsible for load bearing.
When the porosity is less than the critical porosity, load bearing
shifts to skeleton. The test results for sandstone data adopted
from Jizba [21] for different porosities are shown in Fig. 2, which
clearly shows the nonlinearity in the rock strength for different
porosities of sandstone. The value of s1s3 decreases nonlinearly
as the porosity of sandstone increases. The relationship between
the porosity and the stress deviator of sandstone at different
conning pressures can be expressed as

s1  s3 CCS0  expf  m

(3)

where m is a material parameter, f is the porosity, and CCS0

conned compressive strength when the porosity is zero.
The tting results of the stress deviator versus porosity are
summarized in Table 1, and the exponential equation in Eq. (3)
can describe this relationship quite well because R2 is relatively
high.
Considering the inuence of the porosity, an empirical CCS
model is proposed for rock subjected to triaxial loads and is
expressed as



s1  s3 UCS0 1 asb3  expf  c

(4)

where UCS0 is the uniaxial compressive strength when the

porosity is zero, and a, b, and c are material parameters.
A particle swarm optimization algorithm [22] was used to
obtain a, b, and c, and the results are a 0.21, b 0.49, and
c 7.63. Fig. 3 presents the calculated results using Eq. (4) and
the strength measured in situ. One can see that the predicted
results exhibit great agreement with the measured results.

4. Calculation of the conning pressure at the bottom hole

A laboratory study on the drilling rate of a permeable formation was carried out by Cunningham et al. [14], and a phenomenon in which the drilling rate decreases as the mud column
pressure increases was observed. They explained that the

Table 1
Fitting results of the porosity and differential stress using Eq. (3).

Fig. 2. Porosity versus peak stress at different conning pressures.

s3 (MPa)

Fitting results

R2

0
15
50
100

s1s3 385.31exp(10.19f)
s1s3655exp(9.702f)
s1s3 890exp(7.742f)
s1s3 924exp(-6.52f)

0.90
0.97
0.93
0.73

42

X. Shi et al. / Petroleum 1 (2015) 40e45

Fig. 3. CCS predicted using Eq. (4) versus the measured differential stress for a
variety of sandstones (s1c is calculated).

assumption. He concluded that the cater volume decreases by

approximately 50% when the borehole pressure is nearly equal to
the formation pore pressure from 0 psi to 5000 psi. In other
words, the effective stress theory is problematic for calculating
the conning pressure of the bottom hole. Practical data from a
well located in the Lianhuashan structure of the Sichuan basin
also refutes the assumption. In this case, air drilling was applied
to a depth from 2500 to 2800 m, and the pore and bottom-hole
pressures are 30e32 MPa and 2 MPa, respectively. As a consequence, the differential pressure is 28 to 30 MPa using Eq. (6),
which greatly surpasses the tensile strength of sandstone (the
tensile strength of most sandstones is less than 20 MPa [24]).
Considering above examples, it can be concluded that the
assumption cannot be directly used in underbalanced drilling
(UBD) and air drilling.
The effective stress of saturated soil calculated by Terzaghi's
expression has enough precision, but it is not suitable in rock
mechanics. As shown in Fig. 4, the structure of soil is greatly
different from the structure of rock, and the effective stress
acting upon the skeleton of soil can be described by Eq. (7).
However, for rock material, the total force on an area A is
expressed by As, and the force of the pore uid is fAPp because
the area to which the pore pressure is applied is fA. Then, the
effective stress acting on the rock material can be calculated as
follows [25]:

sPeff

Fig. 4. (a) Soils with contact points and (b) rock with interconnected pores.

increasing mud column pressure leads to an increase in the rock

strength. They also pointed out that the formation pressure (or
the pore pressure) was another main factor that inuences the
drilling rate. As a result, many researchers employed the effective
stress theory proposed by Terzaghi [23] to describe the effect of
the conning pressure on rock the strength, written as

seff s  Pp

(5)

where s is the total stress.

On the basis of the principle, the difference in the mud column pressure and the formation pressure constitutes the main
inuencing factor on the drilling rate, and this difference is called
the differential pressure

Pd Ph  Pp

(6)

The differential pressure is usually assumed to be approximately equal to the conning pressure of the triaxial strength
test by many scholars [6], [12], [13]; however, the bit-tooth
penetration test conducted by Maurer [16] challenged this

As  AfPp
s  fPp
A

(7)

According to the double effective stress developed by

Chuanliang [25], porous media have two types of deformation
mechanisms: (1) the deformation of the skeleton grains leads to
medium deformation called primary deformation [Fig. 5(a)], and
(2) the change in the spatial structure leads to medium deformation called structural deformation [Fig. 5(b)].
Primary deformation can be described by Eq. (7), and the
calculated results are called the primary effective stress. As for
structural deformation, one can use structural effective stress

sseff s  fc Pp

(8)

where fc is the rock contacts porosity, which depends on the

degree of cementation. The contact porosity is greater than the
primary porosity and smaller than one, i.e., f < fc < 1. For a loose
medium, fc / 1, and for dense rock, fc / f.
The boundary between the permeability and the impenetrability of rock is invalid when the double effective stress theory is
adopted because the porosity of rock contributes to the effective
stress in Eq. (7) and Eq. (8). Thus, it is more reasonable to calculate
the conning pressure of the bottom hole by the double effective
stress than Eq. (6). For example, the results calculated from Eq. (6)
and Eq. (7) are shown in Fig. 6 when the depth of a well is 3000 m,
the porosity is 10%, the density of the formation uid is 1.0 g/
mm3, and the densities of the drilling uid (r) are assumed to be

Fig. 5. Deformation of rock.

X. Shi et al. / Petroleum 1 (2015) 40e45

Fig. 6. Calculated results using Eq. (6) and Eq. (7).

Fig. 8. Founder point of the bit weight.

1.6 g/mm3, 1.4 g/mm3, 1.2 g/mm3, 1.0 g/mm3, 0.6 g/mm3, and
0.4 g/mm3. It can be concluded that the differential pressure is
negative according to Terzaghi's expression when the density of
the formation uid is less than that of the drilling uid; when the
density of the drilling uid is 0.4 g/mm3, the differential pressure
is 18 MPa, in other words, the rock of the bottom hole was
loaded with an e18 MPa tensile load. In contrast, the calculated
result using the primary effective stress is compressive and equal
to 9 MPa. According to the experimental values, the uniaxial
compressive strength of rock is 10e15 times its tensile strength,
and an e18 MPa tension stress does not obviously exist. The
double effective stress theory is highly recommended to calculate
the conning pressure of the bottom hole for both UBD and
overbalanced drilling (OBD), as it can better explain the test data
[16]. The value of the differential pressure Pd can be less than zero
when the drilling-uid density is extremely low, such as in air
drilling, but it has no signicant effect on the rock strength
because the value of sfPp is small. As a result, UCS can be used in
air drilling.
Considering all of the observations and explanations above,
the nal model for calculating the rock strength of the bottom
hole can be written as

s1 UCS0 1 a Ph  fPp

b 

 expf  c

43

(9)

Es

W 120$p$N$T

Ab
Ab $ROP

(10)

where W is the weight on the bit, Ab is the borehole area, N is the

rotary speed, and T is the bit torque. He found that the minimum
specic energy is reached when the specic energy approaches,
or is roughly equal to, the compressive strength of the rock to be
drilled:

Es Esmin zs1

(11)

After the concept of the mechanical specic energy was

proposed, it has been used to evaluate the drilling efciency and
bit performance [7,9]. According the theory, Es is equal to the
rock's compressive strength at perfect efciency, but the energy
for crushing rock is not sufcient when Es is much greater than
s1. The main reasons for this phenomenon are improper drilling
operation parameters or drilling problems such as bit balling,
vibrations, bit bulling, and bottom-hole balling. In order to
calculate T easily, a bit-specic coefcient of sliding friction m was
introduced to express T as a function of W by Pessier et al. [9]:

T m

db W
36

(12)

where db is the bit size.

The substitution of Eq. (12) into Eq. (10) yields

5. Application

Teale [4] presented an equation to calculate the mechanical

specic energy for rotary drilling in 1965, expressed as

Es W

1
13:33$m$N

Ab
db $ROP

Fig. 7. Es, N, ROP, and W as a function of the depth in the well.


(13)

44

X. Shi et al. / Petroleum 1 (2015) 40e45

Fig. 9. Es, N, ROP, and W as a function of the depth in well 2.

The eld operation and logging data of a well in the western

Sichuan basin are employed to calculate s1 and Es by using Eq. (9)
and Eq. (13). The porosity of rock as function of increasing depth
was provided by the logging engineer. The pore pressure data
were predicted according to Eaton [26]:

Pp Pobs  Pobs  Ph 



Dtn 3
Dto

(14)

6. Conclusion

where Pobs is the overburden pressure (rocks and uids), Dtn is

the normal sonic travel time, and Dto is the observed sonic travel
time (log data).
UCS is estimated from Ref. [27].

UCS 0:00069$Vp1:385

between 2100 m and 2340 m, which means that UBD is very

efcient in this formation. However, ROP is comparatively low,
and Es is very high in regions A and B compared to other drilling
parameters. Therefore, one can conclude that this phenomenon
was mainly caused by the increase in the bit weight and the
decrease in the rotary speed. After these parameters were
adjusted, the efciency of drilling greatly improved.

(15)

where Vp is the sonic velocity.

Es, s1, ROP, N, and W as a function of the depth from 3100 m to
3900 m for rock mainly consisting of sandstones are shown in
Fig. 7. The results indicate that both Es and s1 increase as the
depth increases, and Es is less than s1 when the drilling depth is
less than 3460 m. In other words, drilling is efcient. However, Es
is greater than s1 when the drilling depth is greater than 3460 m.
This also illustrates that ROP does not always increase as the bit
weight increases. When the bit weight increases within region A
in Fig. 7, ROP decreases, and Es increases, which means the energy
added by increasing the bit weight is inefcient. The point at
which ROP stops increasing as the bit weight increases is referred
as the founder point [7]. From Fig. 8, the founder point of the well
eld test is approximately 250 KN. It can be concluded that the
CCS model presented in this article can be used to optimize the
drilling parameters.
The values of Es, s1, ROP, N, and W as a function of the depth of
another well also located in the Sichuan basin are plotted in
Fig. 9. The drilling model is UBD, which differs from previous one,
and the coefcient of formation and the mud density are
1.1e1.3 g/cm3 and 1.0 g/cm3, respectively. As shown in Fig. 9, s1
has very little signicant variation as a function of depth, mainly
owing to the limited depth obtained from eld, and the phenomena of decreasing ROP and increasing Es as the depth increases indicate bit wear or bit balling. Es is much less than s1

1. According to Jizba's experimental data, a new CCS model

considering the inuence of the porosity is proposed. The
nonlinear feature of the rock strength as the conning pressure increases is accurately described by the model.
2. The double effective stress theory, which treats the porosity
as a weighting factor of the formation pore pressure, is
introduced to calculate the conning pressure.
3. Combined with the mechanical specic energy equation, the
new CCS model can be used to indicate the inefciency of a
drilling situation and optimize the drilling parameters.
4. The proposed model is suitable for both OBD and UBD, and
UCS is recommended for use under air-drilling conditions.
Acknowledgments
The work is supported by the Open Fund (Number: PLN1421)
of State Key Laboratory of Oil and Gas Reservoir Geology and
Exploitation Southwest Petroleum University, SWPU Science &
Technology Fund (Number: 2013XJZ029), Sichuan Youth Science
& Technology Foundation (Number: 2014JQ0045), and Natural
Science Foundation of China (Number: 51134004).
Nomenclature
a, b, c
A
Ab
CCS
CCS0
db
Es

material parameters
area of action force
borehole area
conned compressive strength
conned compressive strength when the porosity is zero
bit size
mechanical specic energy

X. Shi et al. / Petroleum 1 (2015) 40e45

m
N
K, Q
Pp
Pd
Ph
Pobs
ROP
T
UCS
UCS0
Vp
W

s
s1
s3
seff

f
fc

sPeff
sseff

m
Dtn
Dto

material parameter
rotary speed
parameters of the material
pore pressure
differential pressure
mud column pressure.
overburden pressure (rocks and uids)
rate of penetration
bit torque
uniaxial compressive strength
uniaxial compressive strength when the porosity is
zero
sonic velocity
weight on the bit
total stress.
maximum principal stress
minimum principal stress
effective stress
rock angle of internal friction
porosity
rock contacts porosity,
primary effective stress
structural effective stress
bit-specic coefcient of sliding friction
normal sonic travel time
observed sonic travel time (log data).

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