Dynamic Behavior of a Drillstring: Presentation and Validation of the Experimental Set-Up

As part of a large study on oil drilling vibrations involving, theory, laboratory tests and development of computer code, the present paper focuses on the effects of the tangential solicitations on the lateral behavior of a rod, representative of drillstring. The lateral behavior of the drillstring is governed by time-varying parameter equations. The torsion-lateral and longitudinal-lateral couplings are both experimentally and numerically studied and particular attention is paid to lateral instabilities. The effect of the curvature of the rod, mud, stabilisers and rotation are taken into account.