Free Rotating Torque Plots

Free rotating torque plots are the

torque plots when string is rotating
and is not moving in either upward or
downward direction (Stationary) . It
should be measured as per the
observations in the picture.
FRT shows if
1. Hole is collapsing
2. Is the current back reaming
operation helping to improve hole
conditions.
3. Are the current RPM and flow
parameters helping to reduce the
surface torque.
Free Rotating Torque Plots ( Depth based)
• Black dots represent the actual surface
torque values
• Dotted blue lines show the theoretical
torque values with different friction factors
0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4. These values can be
acquired from well engineering software.
• Vertical scale is the bit depth scale.
• In this chart, which shows the bore hole
cleaning, torque is dropping showing hole
conditions are improving with current RPM
and Flow.
Free Rotating Torque Plots ( Time Based)
• Ignore the color bands in the picture shown
• This plot is time based plot of FRT friction factors Y
axis.
• The friction factor plotted is the ration between
actual surface torque and theoretical torque with
zero friction. Therefore, when surface torque
increases, It shows increasing trend. When surface
torque decreases, it shows the decreasing trend.
• The blue line passing through the red dots is just the
avg friction between last 2 values.
Examples
• Both time and depth based FRT plots are useful for Monitoring of back
reaming operations, Monitoring bottoms up operation after section TD
• For example, if rig starts back reaming operation and both surface
torque and rotational frictions starts to decrease and then doesn’t
decrease further after 10 minutes of back reaming, it shows that no
further improvement is possible with current surface parameters.
• If the surface toque and rotational frictions values quickly comes to back
reaming done during last stand, it should be possible to advise drilling
team to minimize the current back reaming operation and move back to
drilling.