MATLAB Oil and Gas Conference 2019: Digital Twin of a Drilling Rig: Using Simulink to Predict Rig Performance

A digital twin of the above ground electro-mechanical and control systems for a drilling rig was created using Simulink^® and Simscape^®. Using the built-in blocks reduced the development time of the digital twin. With traditional software development methods it would take over a year with a team of experts. With Simulink and Stateflow, it took less than four months for a single developer. In addition to a significant time savings, the resulting simulation was able to predict performance of the top drive, draw works, and mud pumps with an error of less than 3% for most conditions.

Physics-based twins were built to describe the physical properties of devices (motors, pumps, and bus parameters) including material properties, using pre-built block. These blocks describe system mathematics and dynamics. Using sensor data from three sensors (speed, torque, and current), 16 motor parameters were estimated and calibrated to field data.