.

IADC/SPE 35036

.
.

Soc1e1y of Petrolel.fTI Engneers

A .New Drill Pipe Design Virtually Eliminates Failures That Result from
Shp Damage
G.E. Wilson, Grant Prideco, Inc.
IADC Member
Copyright 1996, IADC/SPE Drilling Conference.
Th~s paper was prepared for presentation at the 1996 IADC/SPE Drilling Conference held in New Orlans, Louisiana, 12-15 March 1996.
This paper was selected for presentation b~ an IADC/SPE Program Committee following review of information contained in an abstract submitted by the author(s). Contents of
the paper, as presented~ have not been rev1ewed by the Society of Petroleum Engineers or the International Association of Drilling Contractors and are subject to correction by
the auth~r(s). The ~at~nal as .presente~, does not n~cessarily reflect any position of the IADC or SPE, their officers, or members. Papers presented at the IADC/SPE meetings
are .subject to pubhcat1on rev1ew by Ed.itorral Committees of the IADC/SPE. Permission to copy is restricted to an abstract of not more than 300 words. Illustrations may not be
copied. The abstract should conta1n conspicuous acknowledgment of where and by whom the paper was presented. Write Libranan, SPE, P.O. Box 833836, Richardson, TX 750833836, U.S.A., fax 01-214-952-9435.

Most fatigue failures occur within three to four feet from

each end of a joint of drill pipe. This is a high stress area
where the drill pipe upsets fade out into the thin wall tube
section (Fig. 1). We have learned through the years that
several things can cause an acceleration of fatigue damage,
which reduces the life of the drill pipe -- some of these
conditions are as follows:

Abstract
Drill strings made prior to 1982 were not designed to meet
the rigorous demands of today's drilling. Deeper wells and
higher angle holes are requiring higher pump pressure, and
more tensile and torque capacity. Back-reaming wells, with
the use of a power swivel, is agitating these conditions even
further.
Recent work has been done to improve the fatigue life of
drill pipe by making drill pipe with longer internal taper
upsets and stress relief grooves.
Even though improvements have been made, slip damage still takes its toll on drill pipe. This paper addresses the
failures caused by slip damage and offers a solution for
solving this problem. Finite element work and fatigue
testing has been done to prove the effectiveness of this new
drill pipe design.

Running Drill Pipe in Compression

When rotary drilling first started, drill pipe weight was
applied to the bit to make it drill. As wells got deeper and
formations got harder, more weight was required to make
the bit drill and the drill pipe started failing. It was learned
that rotating drill pipe in compression caused. cyclic stress
reversals which resulted in rapid fatigue failures. To solve
this problem, heavy bars of steel, called drill collars, were
run between the bit and the drill pipe to supply weight for
the bit. The problem is that sometimes an insufficient
amount of drill collar weight is run to offset the buoyant
force of the drilling fluid and the bounce of the bit. Also in
directional wells, not all of the drill collar weight is available for the bit. The buoyed drill collar weight must be
multiplied by the cosine of the angle of inclination to determine the amount of usable bit weight.
In horizontal wells, drill pipe is sometimes deliberately
run in compression between the drill collars and/or the
heavy weight drill pipe (HWDP) and the bit. The reason for
this is that the drill collars and/or HWDP must be placed in
the vertical or near vertical section of the hole to provide a
component of weight for the bit. By using light weight drill
pipe in the horizontal section of the hole, there is less torque
and drag which permits drilling a longer horizontal section
of hole. The only problem is, when too much weight is applied, the drill pipe will buckle and become fatigued. At the
present time, this limits the length that a horizontal lateral
can be drilled.

Introduction
Premature failures in drill pipe can be very. costly. At a
time when oil and gas prices are low, the prevention of failures could well be the difference in showing a profit or a
loss in new drilling ventures.
Drill pipe slips cause damage to the drill pipe tubes,
which in tum creates stress risers in an area that is already
subjected to high stresses. With sufficient bending, a
fatigue crack will develop causing a premature failure.
Fatigue
Most premature failures in drill pipe are caused by fatigue
damage. Fatigue in drill pipe is the result of rotational
bending which produces cyclic stress reversals, below the
tensile strength but above the endurance limit of the drill
pipe. Theoretically, the endurance limit of steel is a stress
level below which the drill pipe would run forever without
fatigue damage. However, drilling environments are usually
corrosive so the endurance limit of steel will be reduced or
eliminated, depending on the degree of corrosiveness.
Fatigue is cumulative and doesn't go away -- it just continues to build up until the drill pipe finally fails.

Too Much Change In Cross Section

A large difference in cross sectional area between the drill
collars and the relatively light weight drill pipe can cause
rapid accumulation of fatigue damage in the drill pipe
directly above the drill collars. W.L. Kirkl with Shell Oil
Company, suggested that the polar section modulus (PSM)
41

A NEW DRILL PIPE DESIGN VIRTUALLY ELIMINATES FAILURES THAT RESULT FROM SLIP DAMAGE

ratio should be used to control this change in cross section.

He said in normal drilling conditions, the PSM ratio should
not exceed 5.5 and in a corrosive environment, 3.5 should
be the maximum ratio. The equation for PSM is as
4

follows:PSM
Where:

= 0.196( D

Dd

IADC/SPE35036

above the slips and without the use of a backup tong. Drill
pipe can also be bent with improper handling practices and
by running it in compression. Not only does bent pipe cause
fatigue, but it also causes vibration and eccentric wear~ Frequent visual inspections should be performed so bent joints
can be laid down and straightened.

Corrosion
Stress corrosion cracking continues to be a problem in the
fatigue life of drill pipe. Drilling stresses are increasing and
drilling fluids are becoming more and more corrosive with
the increased use of low-pH, low-solids brine and polymer
mud systems. The drilling environment is also becoming
more corrosive with the increased presence of hydrogen
sulfide and carbon dioxide. Scavengers and inhibitors
should be added to the mud systems and the pH should be
maintained at 10.5 or higher to help prevent corrosion. In
the past it was common practice to use normalized grade
E drill pipe, with 75,000 P.S.I. minimum yield tensile
strength, in a sour environment. Today, more and more
controlled yield grades (90,0000 to 95,000 P.S.I.) are being
used. This material has a better chemistry that is quenched
and tempered to a low hardness, which makes it more resistant to sulfide stress corrosion cracking, and also more
resistant to hydrogen embrittlement.

D =Outside diameter (in inches)

d =Inside diameter (in inches)

In most cases, application of this principle will show

that smaller drill collars and/or HWDP will be required in
the transition zone, between large drill collars and drill
pipe.

Drilling Through Dog Legs

Many years ago, Arthur Lubinski2 illustrated in his work
that drilling through dog legs can cause severe fatigue damage to the drill pipe. He developed curves for estimating
cumulative fatigue damage that can be found in API RP-7G.
These curves are for the drill pipe weight hanging below the
dog leg, without the weight of the bottom hole assembly
(BHA). His idea was that the BHA weight would be on the
bit while drilling and therefore would not be added to the
drill pipe weight below the dog leg. A worst case situation
would be to rotate the pipe with the bit off bottom, when a
dog leg is near the surface. When this happens, the BHA
weight and drag would have to be added to the drill pipe
hang down weight, below the dog leg. This can cause rapid
fatigue damage and it is a common occurrence in today's
drilling with power swivels, as the well is back reamed
during trips. Reduction in RPM, and slower upward motion
of the drill pipe, will help reduce fatigue damage when
these conditions exist. It seems that dog legs are becoming
more and more prevalent today, while drilling with navigational type steering tools, because of the ease in making fast
directional changes. It appears that heat checking of drill
pipe is also on the rise, resulting from key seats being
formed in these dog legs. Directional changes should be
gradual to prevent these problems.

Drill Pipe Upset Geometry

In the manufacturing of drill pipe, tool joints are welded to
the tubes. For the weld to be as strong as or stronger than
the tube, it must have a larger cross-sectional area. This is
accomplished by upsetting the tube before welding. Three
different types of upsets are used on drill pipe -- internal,
external and internal-external (Fig. 2). The type of upset
required is usually determined by the size of drill pipe and
the kind and size of connections to be used on the tool
joints. Internal and internal-external upsets have an internal
taper where the upset blends or fades into the tube I.D. It
has been determined by previous finite element testing that
this can be an area of high stress concentration if the transition is abrupt and fatigue will develop very rapidly on the
drill pipe J.D. This condition is further worsened by the loss
of internal plastic coating in this area which leads to corrosion and erosion, followed by fatigue cracking. Upsets with
longer internal tapers and larger radii have been developed
to help prevent these problems. With the longer upset taper,
the peak stress is greatly reduced and moved from the inside
diameter to the outside diameter. If a crack does develop, it
will be much easier to find on the O.D. rather than the I.D.
of the drill pipe. Hydraulics are also improved because of
less turbulence through the long taper upset3 .
A new stress relief groove between the tool joints and the
thin wall tube has also been developed to further reduce
stresses in the fadeout of the tube upset, thereby increasing
the fatigue life of drill pipe4.

Whipping Action
Fatigue damage is caused in drill pipe by whipping action
that is created when unstabilized drill collars are rotated at
a high RPM. An excessive number of drill collars and/or a
relatively large hole size will cause fatigue damage to grow
at a rapid rate. Critical rotary speeds can cause even greater
fatigue damage to drill pipe and in some instances will
buckle the pipe.
Crooked Drill Pipe
Rotating bent drill pipe is another means of generating fatigue. A large percentage of crooked drill pipe is bent by
breaking out the connections with the tool joint too high

42

IADC/SPE 35036

G.E. WILSON, GRANT PRIDECO

Slip Damage
New upset and tool joint designs have increased the fatigue
life of drill pipe but slip damage prevents the industry from
receiving the full benefit of these improvements. It so happens that slip damage occurs near the end of the pipe where
the highest stresses are located. Slips are designed to bite
into the pipe to prevent it from slipping down the hole,
while connections are made up or broken out. Damage is
even more severe if the pipe is allowed to turn in the slips or
if the slips and slip bowl are not properly maintained. Slip
cuts cause stress risers which in turn generate cracks and
fatigue failures. Stopping the pipe with the slips and/or improper maintenance of slips and slip bowl will also crush
the drill pipe. As wells are drilled deeper, crushing will become more prevalent with the increased drill string weight.

for obtaining a very repeatable radius and angle in each

notch. This resulted in a 60 degree flank angle and a
0.020" (0.50 mm) root radius. They were all cut to a 0.036"
(0.91 mm) depth. This depth was chosen because it was the
maximum allowable for premium class drill pipe in the API
PR-7G. Placement of the notches was determined from a
two year joint study by API and IADC that was presented at
an IADC annual conference in New Orleans, Louisiana,
September 23, 1990. This report showed a high number of
failures in the slip area at 20" (508 mm), 24" (610 mm),
30" (762 mm), 36" (914 mm), 40" (1,016 nun) and
42" (1,067 mm) from the box tool joint shoulder. Two
inches (51 mm) were added to each of these numbers to
allow for tool joints that are two inches (51 mm) longer
than standard, which is a common practice today. Precision
notches were machined on both sides of the pipe
(180 degrees apart) at the locations listed above. (Figs. 3
and 4).

New Drill Pipe Design

This paper presents a new drill pipe design that appears to
be a solution to slip damage problems. It consists of a thick
wall tube being welded in between the box tool joint and the
drill pipe upset. This tube has the same wall thickness as
the drill pipe upset and the tool joint weld neck, and is sufficiently long (approximately 3 feet) so the slips can be set
on the thick wall section. This will completely remove the
slips away from the high stress area of the drill pipe. The
thick wall tube will also help prevent crushing and bending
of the drill pipe in the slip area. It is first welded to the drill
pipe upset and then the tool joint is attached to the thick
wall tube. The drill pipe tube is made shorter, to allow for
the added length of the thick wall tube.

Fatigue Testing
The fatigue tests were performed in a cantilever beam rotary
fatigue machine at the Stress Engineering Laboratory. (Fig.
5).
A prior set of tests had been performed on the long taper
upset containing a stress relief groove using a constant
deflection that simulated a hole curvature of approximately
33 Degrees per 100 feet (30.5 meters). This same deflection
was used to test the standard, long taper upset drill pipe as a
comparison.
To test the thick wall tube specimens, it was decided that
the hole curvature should be the same for all types of
specimens. Therefore, a math model was constructed and
finite element work was performed to consider a full joint of
pipe in a curved hole. The math model calculated the moment required to rotate the face of the shoulder on one end
of a joint of pipe 10 degrees with respect to the shoulder on
the opposite end.
The moment required to rotate the tool joints 10 degrees
for the standard long taper upset drill pipe was 18,132 ft.lbs. (24,584 N m) The moment required to rotate the tool
joint 10 degrees for the thick wall tube drill pipe was
19,013 ft-lbs (25,778 N m). The load for deflecting the
thick wall tube specimens was therefore increased by the
ratio of the moments, which was a 5% increase. If a string
of pipe is positioned in a constant radius curve, the relative
rotational displacement between the pin and box of each
joint will be the same for all the joints in the curve. The
joints may not be tangent to the curve at the shoulder, but
the angular displacement increments will be equal.

Planning the Testing Procedures

Fatigue testing was selected as the method for comparing
the thick wall tube design to standard drill pipe. It was decided to simulate slip damage in the test samples by the use
of precision machined notches so the damage would be the
same in each test specimen.
Test Specimens
Six specimens were manufactured for testing -- three with
the thick wall tube and three standard joints with the long
taper upset. Two of the thick wall tube specimens had 3
112" (89 mm) bores and one had a 3 1/4" (83 mm) bore for
evaluation purposes. All were 5" 19.50 lbs/ft., S-135 tubes.
The specimens were 120 inches long from the shoulder of
the box to the cut off end of the pipe. They were machined
at the cut off end of the pipe to provide a smooth surface for
the loading rollers in the fatigue test machine, and to align
the tube to the connection within 0.050 of an inch (1.27
mm).
There were twelve notches cut in each of the specimens
to simulate marks left by the gripping dies in the rotary
slips. The notches were cut in a milling machine using a
threading insert as a cutting tool in a fly cutter. The
threading inserts were used because they provided a means

Fatigue Test Results

Three standard long taper upset (SLTU) specimens and
three thick wall tube (TWT) specimens were rotated to failure in the cantilever beam fatigue test machine. The results
can be found in Table 1. Figure 6 shows the same data in

43

A NEW DRILL PIPE DESIGN VIRTUALLY ELIMINATES FAILURES THAT RESULT FROM SLIP DAMAGE

order of fatigue life. Table 2 shows results that have been

averaged for a comparision of the standard drill pipe and
the new thick wall tube drill pipe. These fatigue test results
show that the new thick wall tube drill pipe design, with
slip damage, has more than six times the fatigue life of
standard long taper drill pipe with the same slip damage. It
also shows that fatigue life of standard, long taper upset
drill pipe has been greatly reduced by the slip damage. In
previous tests, the standard long taper upset drill pipe averaged 471,500 cycles to failure. This shows that the
expected fatigue life for standard drill pipe is reduced by
approximately 60%, because of slip damage.
Conclusions
1. The new thick wall tube design of drill pipe will completely remove the slips from the high stress area in drill
pipe.
2. The new thick wall tube design will greatly improve the
fatigue life of drill pipe with slip damage.
3. The thick wall tube will greatly reduce the chances of
slip crushing.
4. The thick wall tube design will help prevent bending of
the pipe in the rotary table while making up and
breaking out connections.
5. The new thick wall tube can be heat treated to a lower
hardness than S-135 drill pipe or 165,000 minimum
yield drill pipe, so that the slips will bite in better and
prevent the pipe from slipping.
6. The new thick wall tube design will prevent washouts,
resulting from slip damage.
Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the people at Stress Engineering for their
help in testing this new drill pipe design. I also want to
thank Grant Prideco for allowing me to present this test
data and I thank everyone that helped in making the test
specimens, and doing the test work.

References
1. W.L. Kirk, "Deep Drilling Practices in Mississippi,"
JPT, June 1972.
2. Arthur Lubinski, "Maximum Permissible Dog-Legs in
Rotary Boreholes," Presented at 35th Annual Fall
Meeting of SPE, October 2-5, 1960, in Denver
3. G.E. Wilson, "What Difference Does Miu Make in the
Fatigue Life ofDrillpipe?", IADC/SPE 23841, Presented
at the IADC/SPE Drilling Conference held in New
Orleans, Louisiana, February 18-21, 1992.
4. G.E. Wilson, "A New Tool Joint Design Increases the
Fatigue Life of Drill pipe Tubes," SPE/IADC 25772,
Presented at the SPEIIADC Drilling Conference held in
Amsterdam, February 23-25, 1993.

44

IADC/SPE35036

Fatigue Test Results

Specimen
Number

Specimen
Type

Crack
Location

Cycles

SLTU

3rd. Notch

187,430

SLTU

3rd Notch

184,499

SLTU

2nd Notch

198,834

TWT (3-1/4" bore)

1~ Notch

1,540,327

TWT (3-1/2" bore)

1st Notch

1,101,451

TWT (3-1/2" bore)

1st Notch

1,278,936

Table 1

Standard Drill Pipe vs Thick Wall Tube Drill Pipe

Specimen
Type

Average Cycles

Standard Drill Pipe

190,254

New Thick Wall Drill Pipe

1,306,904

Table 2

45

High Stress in Fadout Area

Drill Pipe

Fig. 1

Drill Pipe Upsets

~////////

Internal

'//////

External

Fig. 2

46

InternalExternal

NOTE:
Add two grooves located 180 apart
at each position dimensioned from
box shoulder.

TYP. GROOVE PROFILE

0.036+0.005
Centerline of
groove profile
\

\
\

L-----~~\--~-----~

I
I

'

I
I
I

l.020 R +0.005 1n
roove bottom

TYP. VIEW OF A NOTCH

NORMAL TO TUBE SURFACE

hlo---------olo..!-

Centerline of tube
(Groove to be centered
on tube centerline
within 1/16)

\
~

90+2

'c t ~

jo.902

Max. Ref.

0.785 Min. Ref.

Fig. 3
47

~-~~

5 . 0 0 0 Di a . Re f .
4.276 Dia. Ref.

NOTE:
Add two grooves located 180 apart
at each position dimensioned from
box shoulder.

22
26

TYP. GROOVE PROFILE

32
38
42

0.036+0.005

44

Centerline of
groove p rofi Ie
\

\
\

L - - - - - _j~--f'oo::->t-

-------1-

I
I
I
I

1.020 R +0.005 1n
roove bottom

TYP. VIEW OF A NOTCH

NORMAL TO TUBE SURFACE
Centerline of tube
(Groove to be centered
on tube centerline
within 1/16)

\
~

900+201

'c_

t jo.913
~

Max. Ref.
0.795 Min. Ref.

Fig. 4
48

~___....~--

~~

5.000 Dia. Ref.

4.276 Dia. Ref.

FATIGUE MACHINE
BACK CHUCK
FRONT CHUCK

1105"

LOADING
ROLLERS

_____

._.,._~::":":.=--==------------

FIG. 5

FATIGUE LIFE OF NOTCHED SPECIMENS

TWT 3-1/4" ID

TWT 3-1/2" ID

CD

a. TWT 3-1/2" ID
~
c

CD

(;

8.

tn

SLTU

SLTU

SLTU

200.000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

Cycles to Failure

FIG. 6

49

1,200,000

1,400,000

1,600,000