SPE-173964-MSMS

A New Approach To Diagnosis of Sucker Rod Pump Systems by Analyzing

Segments of Downhole Dynamometer Cards
Galdir D. Reges Jr., Universidade Federal da Bahia
Leizer Schnitman, Universidade Federal da Bahia
Ricardo Reis, Universidade Federal da Bahia
Fabricio Mota, Universidade Federal da Bahia

Copyright 2015, Society of Petroleum Engineers

This paper was prepared for presentation at the SPE Artificial Lift Conference - Latin America and Caribbean held in Salvador, Brazil, 2728 May 2015.

This paper was selected for presentation by an SPE program committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents
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Abstract

This work proposes a new method of diagnosing the Sucker Rod Pump Systems, by analyzing segments
between the points of opening and closing valves identified in the Downhole Dynamometer Cards. An
analysis of the shape of the pumping condition classes represented in the Downhole Dynamometer
Cards, especially regarding the behavior of segments between the valve opening and closing points is
presented. The feasibility of the classification of Downhole Dynamometer Cards by the curvature
characteristics of segments is demonstrated. Then, methods of classification of 16 pumping condition
classes are presented, 4 by simple statistics and 12 of them extracting curvature characteristics of the
segments and using statistics to implement Mamdani fuzzy inference systems. Tests are developed with
classifiers created by the method, and the test results over a library of Dynamometer Cards from real
wells, previously classified by human experts, demonstrate the feasibility of the approach and the
precision of the classification even without a deeper study to choose the better characteristics and
statistics. In addition the classifiers were developed using samples of Dynamometer Cards from the
literature, showing that the method reduces the need of many samples of the great variety of the
Dynamometer Cards Shapes from real wells. Different from other methods, these results indicate the
severity degree of many pumping condition classes and demonstrate the concomitant pumping condition
detection feature. The classifiers were even able to spot misleading classifications by the human experts
thanks to deeper understanding of the behavior of the Dynamometer Cards segments in the case of one
or more anomalies in the system. The features to quantify and identify concomitant classes of so many
pumping conditions demonstrated in this approach are novel in the area. The paper shows the feasibility
of the approach and the potential for greater identification precision.
2 SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS
Introduction

The Sucker Rod Pumping System (Figure 1) is the most common method of artificial elevation of
petroleum (Thomas 2001). The system performs a reciprocating oil pump, and every cycle of this
movement is generated a curve representing the displacement and the load of pumping rods at each
moment of the cycle, and this curve is given the name of the Dynamometer Card.

Figure 1: Sucker Rod Pumping System

The Dynamometer Card is the main monitoring tool of the Sucker Rod Pumping System (Takcs 2003).
Although the study of Dynamometer Cards have started in 1936 (Gilbert 1936), so far there is no
consensus about the optimal method to perform computational analysis of the Sucker Rod Pumping
System through Dynamometer Cards.
Many advanced analytical methods were used in classification of Dynamometer Cards in several works,
such as hierarchical systems specialists (Abello, Houang, and Russell 1993), symbolic neural networks
(Corra 1995), artificial neural networks (Bezerra, Schnitman, and Filho 2009), analysis of frequency
spectrum (de Lima, Guedes, and Silva 2009) and Support Vector Machines (Li et al. 2013).
However, such methods have resulted in diagnostic systems that present results only for part of the
diagnoses that can be performed by human experts. The results are qualitative and generally do not
predict an anomaly or infer the degree of severity of any anomalies identified (without quantitative
results). Moreover, despite the concomitance of anomalies in the pumping be considered common,
generally the systems also does not deal with situations with pumping condition that have more than one
anomaly occurring at the same time.
SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS 3

This paper presents a new approach to analysis of the shape of the Downhole Dynamometer Cards
(DDC) for diagnosis of the Sucker Rod Pumping System, based on the analysis of segments of the DDC,
in order to overcome the limitations of the methods traditionally used.
In common the methods typically used generally are based on the comparison of the whole shape of the
DDCs. It being understood that the variety in shape of the DDC is very large, including between DDCs
from the same pumping condition, i.e. of the same class, we can affirm that the deficiencies identified in
these markets may be largely a result of the strategy of assimilation of the shape as a whole.
The new approach presented here addresses the analysis of DDC for diagnosis of the Sucker Rod
Pumping System as a problem of individual analysis of their main segments and the articulation between
them. For extracting the segments a method of segmentation of the DDC is used, based on approximate
identification of the points of opening and closing valves. Features of the curvature of the segments
identified are then extracted from DDCs of all known pumping conditions, being from real wells DDCs
and artificial DDCs generated from figures of literature available. Statistics are generated for each
feature of each DDC for each class and then are used to feed classifiers based on Fuzzy logic that offer a
degree of pertinence of each parsed DDC in relation to the class for which they are parameterized.

Statement of theory and definitions

The diagnostic process of the Sucker Rod Pumping System through DDCs can be considered a
classification process. The classes are the pumping conditions recognizable in the shape the DDCs,
being a set formed by the pumping condition of normal operation, said Normal, and various conditions
caused by anomalies in the pumping operation.
It can be said that one of the biggest problems in the diagnosis of Sucker Rod Pumping System through
the DDCs is the wide variety of shapes that they can have, even representing the same pumping
condition, as can be seen in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Samples of DDC of the Fluid Pound class.

This large variation in shape of DDCs in the same class can be caused by the difference in the degree of
severity of the anomaly or even by the presence of different concomitant anomalies, which together
cause shapes of DDC that can be considered unpredictable.
Observing the shapes that the DDCs may take representing each pumping condition and their degrees of
severity, we can distinguish then by describing the segments between the estimated points of opening
4 SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS
and closing valves in DDCs.
In the Sucker Rod Pumping System valves are considered to be fundamental, because an efficient
pumping operation mainly depends on the operation of them (Takcs 2003). These valves are check
valves, which allow the passage of fluid in just one direction. Are two valves, the travelling valve that is
inside the piston (Figure 1-3) and the standing valve, which is located at the bottom of the pump.
Essentially the opening and closing of valves in the system, being simple check valves, occur due to
pressure variation that can be inferred by the variation of load on the dynamometer. Several anomalies
in the pumping operation can change the behavior of the pressure variations, and therefore delay or
advance the opening of valves in the piston displacement. In a DDC of anomalous pumping condition,
points of opening and closing of valves can be identified similar to how it is done in a DDC of ideal
pumping condition, determining whether the segments of main load variation in the beginning and end
of the piston displacement, which indicate the main pressure variations, and the opening and closing of
valves can be identified at points of maximum and minimum load of them.
The pumping conditions include Normal pumping condition, i.e. without anomalies, and pumping
conditions with various anomalies. Pumping conditions are treated here as classes, to use the
terminology commonly used in the field of pattern recognition.
As regards the methods of analysis of shape contours, they can be divided between global contour
methods of analysis (continuous) and the methods of structural analysis (Zhang and Lu 2004). Usually
the methods used in DDC analysis systems are methods of global contour analysis, and even works
using segmentation just process all the segments together, regardless of the relationship between the
segments, and the individual information on them. Although more practical, the global contour methods
do not have good results when dealing with articulated shapes like scissors and humans, and the
structural methods are the most recommended in these cases. We consider the problem of analysis of
DDCs as an issue of analysis of articulated figures observing the articulation between its segments, their
bends and relations.
To the analysis of contour structures is necessary to win an important limitation, the amount of expected
structures in the forms. In the specific case of DDCs we have the advantage of being able to define these
structures expected once we understand the general shape that DDC must assume, so we understand the
segments that appear in their contour.
As the method presented by Reges for segmentation of DDCs (D. Reges Jr., Schnitman, and Reis 2014),
this work uses the principle that the general shape of any DDC can be approximated to two basic
polygons:
Tetragon, due to the general shape of the full pumping conditions, where the piston does not
come out of the fluid during the cycle, as can be seen in Figure 3-a.
Concave Hexagon, due to the shape of the more severe Pump Off conditions, where the piston
comes out totally or partially of the fluid, as can be seen in Figure 3-b.

Figure 3: Polygons predefined to approximate any DDC

From the comparison of the shape of any DDC to one of these two polygons, you can then identify the
SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS 5
points of opening and closing valves at the vertices of them, and then segment the DDC. With the
segmentation the analysis of statistics relating to the features of the segments becomes viable.
For statistics relating to features reflect the variety of DDC shapes of each class can have it takes
samples. Samples from real wells are hard to get and even when the big oil companies provide samples,
there is the problem of the variety thereof. The DDC of a well varies very little in time, so a large
amount of samples from the same well tends to be very similar. In addition, some pumping condit ions
are rarer than others, and from the most extreme severity degrees are even rarer. Thus, despite using
DDCs from the library provided by Petrobras for the Universidade Federal da Bahia, is still need to
work around the problem of the lack of samples of various classes and grades of severities classes. In
this context the work of Bezerra demonstrated that using DDCs generated artificially is viable
(BEZERRA 2010). So in this work various DDCs generated artificially from figures of literature were
used to expand the capacity of recognition of the classifiers developed.

Description and application of processes

For the development of this work is used a library of DDCs from real wells containing 6132 DDCs
sorted by Petrobras in 5 different classes, being: 1863 of Normal, 4120 of Fluid Pound, 48 Pump Hitting
Up, 17 Gas Interference, 84 Leaking Standing Valve.
In addition, were also used artificially generated DDCs from figures of literature (Keating, Laine, and
Jennings 1991; Schnitman, Albuquerque, and Corra 2003). Figures were selected representing extremes
of severity of the following classes of pumping condition: 2 Normal, 2 Malfunction Tubing Anchor, 5
Fluid Pound, 3 Gas Interference, 3 Leaking Travellin Valve, 2 Leaking Standing Valve, and 1 each of
the classes Pump Hitting Up, Pump Hitting Bottom, Worn or Split Barrel, Bent or Sticking Barrel,
Friction.
These 11 classes are here treated as relevant classes, because we can say that the complexity of
recognition of then is greater than others which will be presented in the sequel.
Important to note that in this work the Gas Interference class includes Gas block class, which is typically
treated as a class the part, so the 11 classes above can be considered 12 traditional pumping condition
classes.
In addition to the 11 classes, it considers that the classification of DDCs other 5 classes is resolved
before being processed by the classifiers that are presented here, on a stage that can be considered a
preprocessing in the method presented here. The method demonstrated by Bezerra (BEZERRA 2010)
basically uses simple logic to identify the 5 pumping conditions below: Upwelling, Piston Stuck,
Standing Valve Jammed, Worn Pump, Broken Rod.
Thus we have 17 pumping condition classes that are handled by this approach, but we can consider that
are 18 considering the Gas block class which is treated here as a subclass of gas Interference.
Considering the description of the pumping conditions and the distortion they cause in the form of the
DDC, this work considers that some pumping conditions are recognizable by features of the segments
between the points of opening and closing of valves, while others are recognizable by features of
specific sub-segments within the main segments, for example, a sub-segment of load fall in the segment
1, the loading segment, or a concave sub-segment within a segment that should present only stability of
load.
In this approach the following classes are specified by features of the main segments: Normal, Gas
Interference, Leaking Standing Valve, Leaking Traveling Valve, Friction.
The following classes are specified by features of specific sub-segments in the main segments:
Malfunction Tubing Anchor, Fluid Pound, Pump Hitting Up, Pump Hitting Bottom, Worn or Split
Barrel, Bent or Sticking Barrel.
Classifiers based on Fuzzy logic were created to analyze the degree of pertinence of the DDCs to each of
the 11 relevant classes, after the preprocessing that filters the 5 classes treated by the method of Bezerra
(BEZERRA 2010).
To parameterize the classifiers created, features statistics were calculated from the segments of each
6 SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS
DDC for each class.
Each CDF underwent a normalization process of the displacement and load values.
For each nth point in the DDC (dn, ln), n = 1 ... N, where dn is the displacement of each point of the
DDC, ln is the loading and N is the amount of points, so we have:

= = (1)

(2)
= =

Each DDC also underwent a process of normalization of the distance between the points.
On normalization of the distance between the points we need the total length of the DDC (tlnt) which is
the sum of all the values of the distance between points distn calculated with equation (3). The new
distance between the points will be dbp = tlnt/N.
From the new distance between the points dbp is constructed a vector that will have the length of the
segment formed by each point with the starting point (ndistj), as in equation (4). Thus, for each segment
length in ndistj will be located in ascending order the index of the first original point that has greater
length of segment formed with the starting point (ipmdistn), and from it will be calculated each new
point as in equations (5) and (6), with the exception of the first point, which shall remain the same.

= (( 1 )2 + ( 1 )2 ) > 1 (3)
= + 1 (4)
= (cos(2( 1 )) ( 1 ) + 1
(5)
> 1
= ( (2( 1 )) ( 1 ) + 1 (6)
> 1

For each CDF were extracted the 4 main segments: 1 or up, 2 or right, 3 or down and 4 or left, from the
method presented by Reges (D. Reges Jr., Schnitman, and Reis 2014). In addition, for the classifiers of
classes that are recognizable by features of sub-segments, were implemented algorithms based on the
same strategy from Reges, to extract the sub-segments of interest from the main segments.
From the segments were extracted the following features: Average Angle, Negative Bending Energy
(NBE), Positive Bending Energy (PBE).
The average angle ang is calculated simply extracting the angles between pairs of sequential points of
each segment, as in equation (7).

2
=2 2( 1 ) ( 1 )
2
= (7)

The Bending Energy indicates the amount of twist represented by curvatures (Duncant et al. 1989). The
Bending Energy sometimes can present similar values for segments with visually different curvatures,
such as a segment with a pronounced concavity can have similar Bending Energy as another segment
that has a concavity and a convexity. Thus, to distinguish better the curvatures of the main segments of
the DDC an alternate version of the Bending Energy is being presented in this work, calculating
separately the negative curvatures (convexity) and positive (concavity), generating then the Positive
Bending Energy and Negative Bending Energy. Both are calculated from the vector of angles between
pairs of sequential points of each segment. First calculate the differences between vector angles in the
equation (8), and then calculates the Positive Bending Energy (PBE) and o Negative Bending Energy
(NBE) as in equations (9) and (10), where ang n is the angle formed between a point of DDC and the
previous point and N is the amount of points of the DDC.
SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS 7

= 1 > 1 (8)

1
= | |2 0 (9)

=1

1
= | |2 < 0 (10)

=1

To extract statistics is important to eliminate the outliers, discrepant data which differ significantly from
other samples. Usually are caused by influence of noise or flaws or inconsistencies in the classification
held by experts. To identify outliers in this work is used the interquartile range interval approach (Upton
and Cook 1996).
The interquartile range is a measure of statistical dispersion, being equal to the difference between the
upper and lower quartiles. From the interquartile range are calculated the inner fences, which are
numerical limits that determine a confidence interval where there shouldn't be discrepant data. Are also
determined the outer fences, which are numerical limits from which are found the extreme values or
strong outliers. The values between the inner and outer fences are considered possible outliers, or weak
outliers. The range or interquartile range IQR is determined by finding the values Q1, Q2 and Q3. Q2 is
the median value of the data, and by dividing the data between before and after Q2 one can calculate Q1
and Q3, which are respectively the median of the lower half of the data and the median of the upper half
of the data, also called upper and lower quartiles data. The IQR is calculated as in equation (11).

= 3 1 (11)

From the IQR we calculate the inner fences, which are the lower inner fence and the upper inner fence,
from equations (12) and (13).

= 1 1,5 (12)
= 3 + 1,5 (13)

And the outer fences, lower outer fence and the upper outer fence are calculated as in equations (14) and
(15).

= 1 3 (14)
= 3 + 3 (15)

The interquartile range statistics are then generated from the features extracted from all segments of all
the DDCs.
Knowing that the DDCs from real wells do not necessarily represent all the variety of forms of each
class, the artificial DDCs generated were used to adjust the values of interquartile ranges. As the inner
fence range represents the range's most trusted data and artificial DDCs are generated through figures
that represent ideal examples of the pumping conditions, so here we use the maximum and minimum
values of the features extracted from the artificial DDCs when these exceed the value found in the
statistics of DDCs from real wells, then the outer fence values are recalculated. The same strategy is also
used when dealing with pumping condition classes in which there is no DDCs from real wells.
The Fuzzy logic is a form of logic that accepts intermediate values in addition to the simple true and
false from the Boolean logic, which helps reflect the human form to relate to inaccurate statements like
too hot and warm, or little low and medium (Ishibuchi, Nojima, and Kuwajima 2008).
In the Fuzzy method is necessary to do the fuzzification of the data, where each input variable has
defined states, as low and high, which are linguistic terms and each term must be associated with a
8 SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS
Fuzzy set by a function of pertinence.
The input variables of the Fuzzy systems created for the classifiers are the 4 interquartile range statistics
extracted from each of the 3 features extracted from each of the 4 segments of the CDF, totaling 48
variables for the design of each of the Fuzzy classifiers developed here. To use the Fuzzy systems
already parameterized for class inference of a DDC will be required only the direct input of 3 features
extracted from the 4 main segments, totaling 12 entries.
For the average angle of the segments were defined the linguistic terms Low, Medium and High.
The pertinence functions of the linguistic terms of average angle variables are then defined based on the
statistics generated using trapezoidal functions, for all major segments, with input range between 0 and
180 for the segments 1 and 3, and between -90 and 90 for the segments 2 and 4. Values that are within
the inner fence of the interquartile range are considered with pertinence 1 to the Medium term. The
pertinence falls proportionally from the lower inner fence to 0 on the lower outer fence, and from the
upper inner fence to 0 on the upper outer fence. Similarly, the Low term has pertinence 1 to values until
the lower outer fence, and this falls to 0 on the lower inner fence. The High term has pertinence 0 values
until the upper inner fence and grows up to 1 in the upper outer fence and above. This approach solves
the problem of defining the functions of pertinence in the Fuzzy logic, excludes strong outliers and
gradually reduces the pertinence of weak outliers. In Figure 4 is displayed the functions of pertinence of
the linguistic terms to the average angle of segment 1.

Figure 4: Functions of pertinence of the linguistic terms of the average angle of segment 1

For the input variables PBE and NBE, were defined two linguistic terms, Low and High. The range of
variation of PBE and NBE was set arbitrarily between 0 to 40000, based on maximum and minimum
values found in the statistics. Were generated pertinence functions similarly to the shown above through
the calculated statistics. In Figure 6 are displayed the functions of relevance of the linguistic terms of
NBE input variable to the segment 2.
The output of the Fuzzy system created infers the degree of pertinence of a DDC to the class that was
parameterized. Specifically for the case of Normal class, two linguistic terms have been defined for the
output, Normal and Abnormal, ranging from 0 to 1, i.e. 0% to 100% of normality. The triangular
relevance function was defined for both terms as displayed in Figure 5.

Figure 5: Functions of pertinence of the linguistic terms of the output of the Fuzzy system parametrized to the Normal class
SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS 9
With the definition of Fuzzy system inputs and outputs are defined the rules of inference. For the case of
Normal class, using the aggregation process by sum, it was defined that the output is Normal if all of the
input variables average angle are Medium, and if all of the Bending Energy variables are Low. On the
other hand, if any input variable average angle are not Medium or any variable of Bending Energy is not
Low, the output will be Abnormal.
Using the method described were created classifiers for all the predefined relevant classes, with different
inference rules depending on the definition of the pumping condition and the expected shape of the
DDC.
For the following classes defined by features of the main segments, being Gas Interference, Leaking
Standing Valve, Travelling Standing Valve, were used the same inference rules described for Normal
class, only changing the parameters of the functions of pertinence depending on the features of the
artificial DDCs and statistics from DDCs from real wells. For the class Friction the inference rule is
different, and was specified to get quantities of NBE higher than expected in Normal class, signaling a
convex segment shape, and amount of PBE underwhelming in the Normal class.
To the classes specified by feature of sub-segments in the main segment the strategy is similar to that
presented above, but a stage of sub-segments extraction is necessary. For the Malfunction Tubing
Anchor was defined that the largest sub-segment with direction down in the segment 1 will have their
features analyzed. In the case of the Fluid Pound was defined that the largest sub-segment with direction
down findable in the 3 segment will have their features analyzed. To the Pump Hitting Up class the
largest sub-segment with direction up in the segment 2 will have their features analyzed. To the Pump
Hitting Bottom class the largest sub-segment with direction down in the segment 4 will have their
features analyzed. For the class Worn or Split Barrel was defined that the largest sub-segment concave
in segment 2 and the largest sub-segment concave in segment 4 will have their features analyzed. For
the class Bent or Sticking Barrel was defined that the largest convex sub-segment in the segment 2 will
have their features analyzed.

Presentation of Data and Results

All 11 classifiers developed by presented approach were tested using the library of 6132 DDCs from real
wells. Although there is no DDCs from real well for some of the pumping conditions, classifiers were
parametrized only with features of artificial DDC and used to analyze the effectiveness of the classifiers
based on real negatives results when applied to DDCs from real wells of other classes.
In the test 1863 DDCs of the Normal class with the classifier of Normal class, 278 had Normal inference
result below 0.5, indicating that were not considered DDCs of the Normal class. With 278 DDCs
classified as not Normal the classifier could be evaluated as having an index of 85.07% hit, however the
278 DDC were then examined individually considering the description of the Normal pumping
condition and the shape presented in the DDC found in the literature, and it is possible to affirm that
these should not be considered Normal, which indicates that the classifier had a 100% hit rate.
In Figure 6 are displayed some of the DDC pre-classified as Normal in the database, but which were
considered Abnormal in classifier developed, and clearly present distortions that cannot be simple
considered normal.
10 SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS

Figure 6: DDC from library from real wells of Normal Class that were classified as Abnormal by the classifier developed

In addition to the test of DDCs from Normal class from the library of DDCs from real wells, all other
DDCs from the same library were tested with Normal classifier developed. All DDCs of other classes
were considered Abnormal as expected, except 12 DDCs from the Pump Hitting Up class.
The Gas Interference classifier tests resulted in 16 of the 17 DDCs of Gas Interference class inferred as
in the class. All DDCs of other classes were classified as not being gas Interference class with exception
of 313 of 4120 DDCs Fluid Pound class, and examined individually considering the description of the
pumping conditions and expected shape in the DDCs can be stated that the average angle of the
segments 1 and 3 are in the limit of the inference to Gas Interference, and maybe the DDCs can be of the
both classes.
The Leaking Travelling Valve classifier tests resulted in 82 of 84 DDCs of the Leaking Standing Valve
class inferred in the class. By examining individually both DDCs not inferred can be affirmed that they
suffer from some concomitant anomaly with the Leaking Standing Valve, which interfere in the final
average expected angle of the segments. All DDCs of other classes were classified as not being of the
Leaking Travelling Valve class.
The Leaking Standing Valve classifier tests resulted in every DDC from the Leaking Standing Valve
class inferred in the class. All DDC from other classes were classified as not being of the Leaking
Standing Valve Class.
The Friction classifier tests resulted in all DDCs from real wells identified as not being of class friction.
The Malfunction Tubing Anchor classifier tests resulted in 4 DDCs of the Normal class and 14 DDCs of
other classes inferred as being Malfunction Tubing Anchor class, and examined individually considering
the description of the pumping condition the form expected at the DDC can be affirmed that they were
correctly inferred with Malfunction Tubing Anchor, the DDCs pre-classified as Normal can be
considered Abnormal and the DDCs of other classes represent concomitant anomalies with Malfunction
Tubing Anchor.
The Fluid Pound classifier tests resulted in 4118 of 4120 DDCs of the Fluid Pound class inferred in the
class. By examining both DDCs not inferred it is possible to affirm that they are on the edge of inference
of the features and maybe they shouldn't have been pre-classified as such. All DDCs of other classes
were classified as not Fluid Pound class.
The Pump Hitting Up classifier tests resulted in 16 of 48 DDCs of the Pump Hitting Up inferred in the
class. Important to note that the Normal classifier had already inferred 12 DDCs of the Pump Hitting Up
class as being Normal. The DDCs of the class that have not been inferred as such were examined
SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS 11
individually and considering the description of the class and the shape expected one can be affirm that
they should not have been classified in the class Pump Hitting Up class. All DDCs from other classes
were classified as not Pump Hitting Up class.
The Pump Hitting Bottom classifier tests resulted in 3 DDCs from the Normal class 1117 DDCs from
the Fluid Pound inferred as being Pumping Hitting Bottom. The DDCs so inferred were examined
individually and considering the description of the pumping condition and the expected shape of the
DDCs can be affirmed that the inferences were correct, so the DDCs of the Normal class shouldn't be
classified as Normal in the library and the DDCs of the Fluid Pound class must represent pumping
conditions that also has the Pump Hitting Bottom and the Fluid Pound.
The Worn or Split Barrel classifier tests resulted in all DDCs from real wells identified as not being of
class Worn or Split Barrel.
The Bent or Sticking Barrel classifier tests resulted in all DDCs from real wells identified as not being of
class Bent or Sticking Barrel.

Conclusions

This paper presents a new approach to analysis of the shape of Downhole Dynamometer Cards (DDC) to
diagnosis the Sucker Rod Pumping System, based on the analysis of segments of DDCs. This new
approach overcomes the limitations of the approach of comparing the whole shape, traditionally used.
The tests results indicate potential for superior accuracy to the presented state of the art when
considering a much larger pumping conditions classes and offering even the identification of
concomitant or borderline anomalies.
The test results show that the Fuzzy system parametrized with statistics extracted is capable of
emulating the human reasoning applied to the visual classifications, acting as an average of the analysis
conducted by experts for the classification of DDCs from real wells used, thus eliminating the possible
inconsistencies that may appear by the interpretation of different specialists and thus offering robustness.
The analysis of the test results of classification has identified possibly misclassified DDCs in the library,
or DDCs with concomitant anomalies, but that were classified with just one pumping condition, because
usually the classification present only a resulting class. On the other hand it was possible to realize that
some results may have been misleading inferences also by the presence of concomitant anomalies, so
more research can help increase the robustness of the strategy, perhaps revising parameters or ignoring
features or working with smooth the shape of the DDC where distortions of sub-segments may interfere
in the analysis of the main segments.
Another advantage of the approach is to allow the adjustment of parameters and rules used in the
classifiers from expert knowledge intuitively, due to the foundations of Fuzzy logic and also due to the
use of features of visual interpretation.
The approach allows even classify separately if a DDC is Normal class or has any problems, regardless
of the precise diagnosis of the anomaly, and that is a quality not found in other jobs in the area. The
pumping operation is sometimes desirable to continue operating even with some level of abnormality in
case of important production, and the quantification of abnormality that this new approach offers can be
of great value to experts in the field, or even for expert systems of decision-making, in order to define
whether the operation enters maintenance or if continuous until a degree of abnormality limit is reached.
Considering the description of the pumping conditions and the possibility of analyzing specific features
that this approach offers, the results of inference systems can be used to assess the degree of severity of
the abnormalities and perhaps even predict a pumping condition when a feature key approaches the limit
of inference.
Is open for future work the establishment of rules of combination between the classifiers created, in
order to make logical eliminations and increase reliability. For example, an expert could set that cannot
exists the concomitance of Interference of gas and Fluid Pound, and the classifier with the highest output
of inference would be the right thing to do.
12 SPE-SPE-173964-MS-MS

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