PO164320 DOI: 10.

2118/164320-PA Date: 14-March-19 Stage: Page: 1 Total Pages: 6

Advanced Signal Analysis of an

Electrical-Submersible-Pump Failure
Owing to Scaling
M. N. Noui-Mehidi and A. Y. Bukhamseen, Saudi Aramco

Summary
In this paper we focus on electrical-submersible-pump (ESP) failure caused by scale buildup. Weak fluctuations recorded in the motor
current signals several weeks before a failure indicate a change in the motor load. Advanced signal analysis of the motor current data
reveals the presence of a dynamic characteristic in the ESP signal during rapid scale buildup in the pump stages. On the basis of the raw
data from the motor current draw, a dynamic cascade can be identified in the current marked with the superimposition of several charac-
teristic frequencies added over time that develop into a chaotic trend. Our analysis was conducted with different signal-processing
tools, such as Fourier transform, wavelet transform, and chaotic attractors, which described the nature of the scale signature in the cur-
rent logs. This analysis was the first step toward developing a real-time diagnostic tool for predicting ESP failures.

Introduction
Well production can be optimized by artificial lift. This practice is commonly applied when the wellbore pressure drop is larger than
the bottomhole flowing pressure. To overcome the pressure difference, several artificial-lift techniques are used to boost production
rates. Practical artificial-lift methods that show substantial production recovery include gas lift to lower the pressure gradient in the pro-
duction tubing and pumps to lower the bottomhole flowing pressure. For several years, surface pumps were used at the early stages of
artificial-lift operations as positive displacement pumps (such as sucker-rod pumps) to achieve the required lift. In recent years, thrust
pumps, such as an ESP, became the ultimate solution to lift production fluids, especially for deep wells. The ESP technology underwent
advances that helped operators to deploy this type of pump deeper in the well and, therefore, extract larger production rates (Sachdeva
et al. 1994; Macary et al. 2003; Qahtani 2007; Bennet et al. 2009, Zhou and Sachdeva 2010). An ESP design considers the effect of
both economic and technical factors (Lea and Bearden 1999; Nguib et al. 2000). Currently, the industry faces challenges in under-
standing the reasons and causes of ESP system failure owing to the complexity of the environment and the harsh media for which these
systems are designed. In some cases, the run life of an ESP system is shorter than the expected design lifetime.
The causes for ESP failure are analyzed through a detailed dismantle/inspection/failure analysis (DIFA) process where each com-
ponent of the ESP assembly is carefully analyzed to determine the failure mode. More than 20% of failure causes are attributed to
motor failure. Electric motors can fail for several reasons. An increase in the motor torque beyond designed values will lead to over-
whelming the required power. A common reason for failure in ESP assemblies is from scale buildup in the pump stages, where scale
forms around the impeller vanes and, therefore, blocks the flow, leading to a gradual decrease of the pump efficiency until it com-
pletely fails. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in improving the analysis of signals recorded from an ESP system for
operational optimization (Haapanen and Gagner 2010). Close monitoring of signal logs allows for proactive control of the
ESP performance.
Here, an advanced signal analysis of a motor failure owing to scale buildup was performed by investigating the dynamic behavior of
the motor current draw.

Pump Failure Owing to Scale Buildup. Several technical studies were devoted to understanding ESP failure. Scale buildup in the
pump stages was noticed in several DIFA processes. Fig. 1 shows scale clogging in nearly all the stages in the pump assembly for those
cases. Comparing a clogged stage to a new stage of the same series shows the severity of the issue. It was observed that scale commonly
forms in the region behind the vanes of the pumping impeller. This phenomenon is mainly caused by recirculations behind the impeller
vanes, resulting in a low-pressure zone that creates an ideal situation for scale formation. Recirculations, or vortex formations behind
the impeller vane, were investigated both experimentally and numerically.
It was shown that in the recirculations, or vortices region, there was a substantial pressure decrease compared to other fluid-flow
areas (Warmoeskerken and Smith 1989; Nienow 1996). On the other hand, scale deposition in downhole pump and tubing, casing flow-
lines, heater treaters, tanks, and other production equipment and facilities was found to depend on the supersaturation conditions met in
situ. This supersaturation can be met in single-composition water while changing the pressure and temperature conditions, or by mixing
two incompatible waters. Commonly known oilfield scale depositions include calcium carbonates, calcium sulfates, strontium sulfates,
and barium sulfates. Sulfate scale, in particular, results from changes in temperature or pressure while fluids (including water) flow
from one location to another (Bin Merdhah and Yassin 2007, 2009). These results were the most logical explanation for the scale
observed in the ESP impellers, where it was clearly observed in the region behind the vanes. In some cases, scale can fill almost the
entire volume behind the impeller vane, as shown in Fig. 1.

Signal Analysis. All ESP installations are equipped with monitoring systems that continuously record different parameters to ensure
good functionality of both the pumping system and the associated sensors. In cases where DIFA confirmed failure owing to scale
buildup, the motor current was continuously recorded as part of the ESP control protocols, along with the fluid rates, the pump speed,
and the intake and discharge pressures. An example of these logs is shown in Fig. 2. It was noted that all the records showed a

Copyright V
C 2019 Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper (SPE 164320) was accepted for presentation at the SPE Middle East Oil and Gas Show and Conference, Manama, Bahrain, 10–13 March 2013, and revised for publication.
Original manuscript received for review 26 February 2018. Revised manuscript received for review 11 October 2018. Paper peer approved 20 December 2018.

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substantial variation trend for several days before failure. In our investigation, the variations recorded in the motor current signals were
used to dynamically follow the pump failure. Time series collected at the electrode were analyzed by Fourier transform, wavelet
transform, and reconstruction of attractors in the phase space.

Fig. 1—Scale buildup on a pump stage compared to the original stage.

40

35

30
Motor Current (A)

25

20

15

10

0
1 January 2000 22 June 2005 13 December 2010 4 June 2016
12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m.
Time

Fig. 2—A sample of the motor current draw before failure.

The signal analysis was performed on the normalized fluctuating component of each recorded motor current time series, following
Eq. 1:
SðtÞ  Smean
sðtÞ ¼ ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ð1Þ
SD
where s(t) is wavelet transform of continuous signal, S(t) is the total signal recorded, Smean is the mean component of the signal, and SD
is the conventional standard deviation. The power spectra obtained by a fast-Fourier-transform (FFT) algorithm permitted the determi-
nation of frequency ranges that were present in the system until failure. Basically, Fourier analysis consists of breaking up a signal into
sine waves (referred to as the analyzing function) of various frequencies. In principle, the FFT measures the similarity between a signal
and the analyzing function by means of an inner product operation between the two. Here, the sine function was represented by complex
exponentials using Euler’s formula. Mathematically, the Fourier transform can be represented as (Rahman 2011) shown in Eq. 2:
ð
1

F ðnÞ ¼ f ðtÞe2pint dt; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ð2Þ

1

where F ðnÞ is the Fourier transform

pffiffiffiffiffiffiffi for the transformation variable n, which represents frequency; f(t) is the signal in the time domain;
and i is the imaginary unit 1. In general, F ðnÞ is a complex value because it is obtained by integrating a function multiplied by a
complex exponential. When a signal contains significant oscillations at the angular frequency n0, the absolute value of jF ðn0Þj is large.
By examining a plot of jF ðnÞj vs. n, it was possible to determine the frequencies that contained the highest energy in the signal.
However, since FFT is only an indication of signal properties in a defined time window, wavelet analysis was used to determine
signal characteristic variations in time. Wavelet analysis was recently introduced as an alternative to Fourier transform. While Fourier
analysis yields the energy density in individual frequency ranges without estimation with time, wavelet analysis permits the tracking of
the spatio-temporal evolution of the signal in various time scales. The wavelet transform of continuous signal s(t) is given in Eq. 3:

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ð þ1 
1 t  s
Cð s; aÞ ¼  pffiffiffi w sðtÞ dt; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ð3Þ
a 1 a
where C is the wavelet transform, and w is the mother wavelet, which is an absolutely integrable function. Wavelet analysis was per-
formed through the dilatation and translation of the mother wavelet.
The parameter a is related to the dilatation and s is the time-shift parameter. In the present study, the Mexican-hat function,
 2
t
wðtÞ ¼ ð1  t2 Þ exp  ; . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ð4Þ
2
was chosen as the mother wavelet. Zheng et al. (2001) showed that this mother wavelet was suitable for detecting unsteady local fluctu-
ations. Park et al. (2001) noted that the scaling in the wavelet analysis represented the performance of stretching and compressing oper-
ations on the mother wavelet to detect the frequency information contained in the signal. The compression operation permitted the
analysis of high-frequency components, while stretching was related to low-frequency components. In the present study, the wavelet
transforms were plotted in time-scale graphs where the wavelet coefficients were normalized by dividing them by the maximal wavelet
coefficient value. The isocorrelations were plotted in contour lines, representing contour levels from 0 to 1. The entire chaotic system
showed particular tendencies in the phase space. Phase-space analysis revealed the nature of the dynamic system and whether particular
attractor tendencies existed through signal embedding. Embedding time series of the normalized fluctuation s(t) corresponding to a cer-
tain flow regime allowed for the identification of the associated attractor in the phase space. The process of embedding a signal, s(t),
corresponds to the construction of a set of signals, s(t þ T ), s(t þ 2T ), s(t þ 3T ),…, s[t þ (n  1)T ], shifted from the original
signal, s(t). Although the definition of the time delay T is arbitrary, some methods were proposed for the evaluation of T. The method of
mutual information proposed by Fraser and Swinney (1986) was used in this work to estimate the time delay of each time series
recorded to construct the associated attractor. In this method, the appropriate time delay was the one that corresponded to the first mini-
mum value of the mutual information function, I(t), calculated from the time series, as defined by Fraser and Swinney (1986).

Dynamic Transition. Several signal samples were analyzed to understand the dynamic behavior of the system before the ESP failure.
The signal analysis showed that the recorded fluctuations had very low frequencies that translated into the gradual buildup of scale in
the different pump stages. Fig. 3 shows a typical Fourier transform of the collected signals. The plot was normalized by identifying the
main frequency component and its magnitude to identify possible harmonics. Fig. 3 also shows that there were several odd harmonics
in the main frequency, fc, but with clearly noted frequency modulation. This frequency modulation resulted from the chaotic character
of the signal in the period before failure.

1.2

1.0
fc
0.8
Ps /Psc

0.6

0.4

0.2

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
f /fc

Fig. 3—A sample of the Fourier transform of the signal recorded.

The existence of both organized structure and chaotic behavior in the system can be better understood from the wavelet transform
shown in Fig. 4, where isocorrelation of the wavelet coefficients is shown. The red corresponds to maximum normalized values
(peaks), and the blue corresponds to the minimum values. The frequency modulation previously noted on the Fourier transform can be
clearly seen on the wavelet plot. As noticed, the periodic event recorded near a/Dt of 50, observed through a succession of maximum
and minimum values, gradually shifted to values of a/Dt near 100. On the other hand, it was observed that the magnitude of the peak
values increased because they occupied larger areas in the last part of the time interval, indicating the growth of a dynamic process in
the system.
During the entire time interval represented in Fig. 4, peak values existed at very low values of a/Dt, indicating an additional chaotic
behavior of the system. The phase-space study of bifurcation problems produced important information about the type of bifurcation
that occurs in a dynamic system when one or more dominant parameters are changed (Fraser and Swinney 1986). The phase portraits
constructed from the normalized fluctuating component of the recorded signals allowed for the type of bifurcation to be identified and
lead to the succession of the different observed flow regimes.
To illustrate the changes in the dynamic behavior of the ESP system, a comparison between a pump with a normal operation mode
and a pump filled with scale is presented in Figs. 5 through 7. In Figs. 5 and 6, both raw signal and corresponding dynamic attractor
are shown, respectively. It was observed that when the motor was free from scale, the raw signal presented with practically no major
fluctuations; in comparison, Fig. 2 showed that the signal clearly had high-frequency fluctuating components. The corresponding attrac-
tor (Fig. 6) showed no dynamic change in the phase space.
When the pump stages were filled with scale, the phase-space attractor representation (shown in Fig. 7) was constructed from the
signal recorded in Fig. 2, which indicated a typical chaotic tendency of the current logs before failure. It was noted that the system
evolved toward a chaotic type of attractor, depicting the complexity in the gradual evolution before failure. The signal analysis

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performed in this work revealed a particular characteristic of the motor current, recorded before the ESP failure, which indicated the
possibility of developing a real-time diagnostic tool to predict the failure of an ESP system several days or weeks in advance, leading to
better control of the production protocol. For instance, if failure caused by scale buildup was predicted through these diagnostic tools,
reducing the motor speed could potentially increase the production periods, even at lower volumes, while a workover rig could be
scheduled for the ESP replacement.

250

200

150
a/Δt
100

50

0
0 1 2 3 ×104 4 5 6
Time (seconds)

Fig. 4—Wavelet analysis of the motor current draw.

40

35

30
Motor Current (A)

25

20

15

10

0
14 September 2009 24 September 2009 4 October 2009 14 October 2009
12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m. 12:00 a.m.
Time

Fig. 5—Raw signal of the motor current while the pump was running in normal operation mode.

2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5
s(t + 2T )

–0.5

–1.0

–1.5

–2.0
–0.6 –0.4 –0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
s(t )

Fig. 6—Dynamic attractor of the signal from Fig. 5 related to a normal operation mode of the pump system.

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2.0

1.5

1.0

0.5

s(t + 2T )
0

–0.5

–1.0

–1.5

–2.0
–0.6 –0.4 –0.2 0 0.2 0.4 0.6
s(t)

Fig. 7—Dynamic attractor of the signal recorded from Fig. 2 related to the pump stages loaded with scale.

Conclusions
We studied dynamic characteristics of the signal recorded from the motor current of an ESP subject to failure caused by scale buildup.
Our studies revealed that the ESP system exhibited a gradual evolution toward a chaotic behavior before failure that was clearly identi-
fied through the signal analysis of the recorded data from the motor current. These results led to the development of a new real-time
diagnostics tool for predicting the failure of the ESP system caused by scale buildup and allowing for better management of the
production protocol.

Nomenclature
a ¼ wavelet-transform dilatation parameter, dimensionless
C ¼ wavelet transform, dimensionless
f2 ¼ wavy-motion fundamental frequency, Hz
F ¼ Fourier transform, dimensionless
i ¼ imaginary unit number, dimensionless
s(t) ¼ normalized fluctuation component of the signal, V
S(t) ¼ total recorded signal, V
SD ¼ standard deviation of the signal, V
Smean ¼ mean component of the signal, V
t ¼ time, seconds
T ¼ embedding time delay, seconds
Dt ¼ sampling time, seconds
s ¼ wavelet-transform time shift, seconds
n ¼ Fourier-transformation variable, dimensionless
w ¼ mother wavelet “Mexican hat,” dimensionless

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Mohamed Nabil Noui-Mehidi is a petroleum engineering consultant at the Saudi Aramco Exploration and Petroleum Engineering
Center—Advanced Research Center. He joined Saudi Aramco in 2008 and had previously worked for the Commonwealth Sci-
entific and Industrial Research Organization, Australia. Noui-Mehidi has more than 29 years of experience in the area of
multiphase-flow dynamics, flowmetering, and flow modeling. His research activities are related to the development of new
technologies in well control and monitoring for upstream oil and gas production, well-intervention tools, and flow sensors.
Noui-Mehidi has authored or coauthored more than 100 journal articles and conference papers on different aspects of funda-
mental and applied fluid dynamics, and has authored or coauthored more than 20 company-granted patents and several
patent applications. He holds a PhD degree in Resource and Energy Science from the University of Kobe, Japan.
Ahmed Y. Bukhamseen is a petroleum engineer with the Upstream Advanced Research Center at Saudi Aramco. He has experi-
ence in reservoir engineering, production operations, and completions research and development. Bukhamseen’s current
research activities cover smart-well completions, production optimization, fiber-optic sensing, and multiphase-flowmetering. He
holds several patents and has authored or coauthored more than 10 technical papers. Bukhamseen holds a BS degree from the
Colorado School of Mines and holds MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University, all in petroleum engineering.

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