Introduction

The drill bit is an important component of the drill string. It penetrates the formations and leads us
towards the hydrocarbons. the bit drills the rock in many mechanisms. Each one of them has a special
way of drilling due to the reason that there are many different types of formations that these bits have
to drill before we reach to the desired depth. The selection of the bits depends on many factors, the
most important factors are the type of the formation, cost and time. Each bit can offer a good
performance when it’s selected wisely and used properly. But drill bit selection is always a complicated
process. The best bit could never be selected.

The bit is pulled out of the well when something is wrong with it, maybe it’s damaged due to improper
operation process or maybe the bit is worn due to long time of drilling, which is normal. When the bit is
pulled out of the hole, the level of damage on the bit must be carefully recorded. The system followed
to evaluate the bit is called the IADC dull grading system which is designed to facilitate the damage
grading. An accurate grading can contribute effectively in bit selection for further operations.

Types of drilling bits

There are two main types of drilling bits: Roller cone bits, fixed cutter bits.

1) roller cone bits:

Roller cone bits comprise one, two or three cones having teeth sticking out of them. A roller cone bit
with three cones is the most often applied type of drilling bit.

Cones are commonly heat treaded and made of NiMo-steel, teeth are sometimes made of NiCrMo-
steel.
Cutting action of Roller cone bits

the cutting action of these bits is compression and crushing. Where the bit is applied on the formation at
the bottom of the well. The teeth of the bit will penetrate the formation on a vertically plane and with
the help of cones rotation these teeth will crush the formation easily. See the sketch of the process in
the figure below

This type is considered as less expensive than all the others. But yet can handle rough and hard
formations, they are more sensitive to the amount of pressure overbalance and thus better indicators of
overbalance.

Bearings
Each one of the cones rotate separately but all of them have the same speed. Bearings are used in each
cone to help facilitate the rotation.

The bearings used within a bit can be: (1) roller bearings, (2) ball-bearings and (3) sliding-bearings. Here
ball-bearings carry the axial loads along the journal, roller-bearings support the radial loads, are charged
mostly and wear first. Sliding-bearings support the axial loads when the ball-bearings are worn out. At
larger bit diameters, ball-bearings are commonly replaced by sliding-bearings.

Before we talk about the types of Roller cone bits we have to know what is offset of the cones.

Offset
This is a horizontal distance between a vertical plane of the center line of the bit and a vertical plane
through the center line of the journal. Offset is sometimes measured in inches but it’s usually measured
by degrees. Typical bit offsets range from 0 to 5 degrees. The “offset” of the cones of rolling cutter bits
determine to some extend the drilling action.

This offset of the cones helps the bit to be much stronger against the harder formations by declining the
angle of the teeth against the formation (by increasing the offset angle), but at high degree offset such
as (5). the teeth will wear out relatively faster than the (0) degree offset. That’s why a high degree offset
is used for harder formations and a low or (0) degree offset is used for softer formations.
classifications of Roller cone bits

There are two main classifications of Roller cone bits:

1. Mill tooth bits

2. Insert bits

1. Mill tooth bits:

also called (steel tooth bits). the teeth of this bit are the same body of the cones, which means they
were designed separately. They are already one body. These bits are very robust and tolerate severe
drilling conditions but wear out relatively quickly. From this reason they are not well suited for deeper
wells where tripping constitutes a large time factor.

2. Insert bits:

also called steel teeth bits. The teeth of this bit are made up of tungsten carbide metal element which
are mounted on the body of the cones, which means both cones and teeth are made sedately and then
attached to each other. These bits do not tolerate shock loadings but they can drill long sections before
being worn out. In general, insert bits of the same bit seize are more expensive than mill tooth bits.
 2) Fixed cutter bits

Also called drag bits and diamond bits. They have no moving parts (e.g. bearings) because they are
made with one cone or head. The head of the bit is fixed to the body of the bit and thus they rotate
together. Due to the fact that fixed cutter bits’ teeth are diamond which is the hardest and strongest
element on earth, it makes the bit to drill a hard formation for great distances before it wears out.
therefore, this type is used for wells with great depths, since it will drill for long distances before it has
to be pulled out of the well (tripped). This implies that the advantages of fixed cutter bit increases as the
depth of the well increases.

Classifications of the Fixed cutter bits

1. Polycrystalline Diamond Compact Bits (PDC bits):

They have artificial diamond disks mounted on a tungsten carbide stud. Although these bits are very
expensive, under the proper drilling conditions, they can drill very fast for long distances. Thus they are
most often applied for offshore drilling and deep wells. PDC bits’ shape determines whether the bit is
made for a straight or directional well trajectory. For example, the bits that are used for directional
drilling should drill the formation in a way that the cuttings would be small.

The cutting action of PDC bits

The cutting action of this type is shearing, since the teeth are inclined to an angle and because the force
applied on the formation is horizontal. Therefore, the teeth will scrap the formation at the bottom of
the well.
 2. Natural diamond bits:

these bits are considered to be the strongest bits, then can penetrate the extremely hard formations by
producing very small cuttings known as (rock flour). That’s why they drill relatively slowly. Since the
teeth of these bits are made up of natural diamonds they are extremely expensive. Therefore, they are
only used on the formations which will wear out the other types of bits before making a reasonable
drilling progress.

the cutting action of Natural diamond bits

The cutting action of these bits is ploughing / grinning. Due to having many small teeth, they can
produce very small cuttings form the formation at the bottom of the hole.

Note: When the depth of the well increases to very great distances, the most important factor on which
the bit is selected, stands on the time concerning, which means even if the formation is not that hard
and rough, and evern if a typical Roller cone bit can drill the formation which are cheaper than the
diamond bits. still a diamond bit could be selected for this deep formation, because the Roller cone bits
wear out relatively very faster than the diamond bits. due to this fact the roller cone bit will wear out
sooner. And the bit has to be pulled out of the deep well and be changed, then run it into the well again
which will take a long time. By suing diamond bits all this time can be saved. But if the company is more
cost concern than time, they could use roller cone bits.
There is another type of bit used for retrieving samples from the reservoirs. They are called Coring bits

Coring bits
also called core bits, which have a ring shaped structure with natural or industrial diamond cutters
mounted on it. when the drilling operation reaches to a formation that is hydrocarbon bearing, a sample
form this formation needs to be taken to the surface for analyses in order to verify weather this well is
worthy to be drilled for extraction or not, this sample is drilled by a special bit called coring bit. Drilling
with core bits leave a column of rock sticking up in the middle of the bit which is picked up by a device
called “core barrel”. This core barrel holds the core and recovers it to the surface.

One of the most prevalent type of coring bit is side wall coring

Side wall coring:

The samples retrieved by this type of bit is called (sidewall core) or (sidewall sample). sidewall coring is a
faster, cost-effective alternative to conventional cores and avoids the ambiguity introduced by the
depth uncertainty of drill cuttings.

the sidewall cores are recovered with miniature diamond-tipped drill bits that preserve the rock pore
structure when they cut a round plug of the formation directly from the borehole wall. Because rock
integrity is maintained, a wealth of geological, geomechanical, and petrophysical data can be obtained
through laboratory analysis of the sidewall cores.

Note: It’s named sidewall coring because it takes core samples form the sides or from the walls of the
well, not form the bottom of the well.
Drill bit selection

Note that as previously mentioned that finding a best bit is almost impossible so we use the term finding
an appropriate bit.

The selection of the bit stands on may factors here are some of the most important ones:

1. The type of the formation and the hardness of the formation:

During drilling, it’s obvious that we will encounter may different types of formations with different
strength and hardness. All of this can be predicted, before starting the drilling operation, through
geological analyses. Therefore, a bit is selected on the basis of the comparing the type and hardness of
the formation with the abilities of the bits. Then for each formation a suitable bit can be selected

2. Well trajectory (directional well):

in directional drilling the possibility of pipe stuck is very high. For this reason, the bits that can
produce small cuttings from the formation are selected, so that the drilling fluid can easily take
these cuttings to the surface so that the possibility of pipe sticking will be reduced. If for some other
reason, an inappropriate bit was selected for a directional drilling. In this case, despite talking about
the alibies of the bit, this bit may produce large cuttings from the formations and make it very
difficult for the drilling fluid to lift them in a directional well, and thus, lead to a pipe stuck.

3. Depth of the well:

As previously mentioned, as the depth of the well increases the stronger bits are selected even if the
formation isn’t that hard. In this case, the bit won't wear out easily and does not have to be tripped
early. With less strong bits the bits are more likely to wear out earlier and would have to be tripped.

4. Time and cost:

there ones depend on the situation of the company. Sometimes a company wants to produce
hydrocarbons earlier by using stronger bits which are expensive. Sometimes a company would use
cheaper bits because it doesn’t matter if the process takes a long time.
 After selecting an appropriate bit, the following perimeters should be considered for a proper
drilling operation.

(bit seize, manufactures, nozzles used, rotation time, applied weight on bit (WOB), applied RPM,
etc.)

Evaluation of the bit

1. Teeth wear:

This is when the height of the teeth is reduced due to friction between the bit teeth and the formation.
The teeth height is graded before the bit is run into the wellbore and after it’s pulled out of the
wellbore. The grading is reported in nearest eighth (in the scale of 0 to 8). thus a bit which teeth are
worn out to half of its original height, is worn 4/8 and reported as T-4. Normally the tooth wear of a bit
is not even distributed over the bit, some teeth may be worn more than others, some are broken out.
Broken teeth are generally remarked as “BT”. The reported wear is an average one based on the most
severely worn teeth. Reporting of the tooth wear is possible when the teeth are measured before and
after the bit was run. Look at the figure below.

This figure shows the teeth of a bit in all grading. The dotted sections represent the current height of the
teeth and the not dotted sections (the simple sections) represent the wear out of the teeth.

It’s likely that a bit should be changed when the grading is between the T-4 to T-5, because below these
grading the drilling operation will be very slow due to reduction in height of teeth, and the diameter of
the well will decrease which will cause problems after the bit is changed with a new now

2. Bearing wear:

Bearing wear: Evaluation of bearing wear in the field is difficult since the bit would need to be
disassembled for inspection. The classification is similar to the tooth wear, using a B instead of T. Thus a
bit which bearings are worn to 7/8 are marked as B-7Often the bearing wear is also reported based on
the total bit running hours. Thus, when a bit is expected to have a rotation time of 40 hours and was
rotating on bottom for 10 hours, the bearing wear is reported as B-2.

10/40=0.25 0.25*8=2 the bearing wear is 2= B-2