Research Proposal Samsom Owino
Research Proposal Samsom Owino
Research Proposal Samsom Owino
MECHANICAL ENGINEERING
BSME/047J/2012
1
DEDICATION
I dedicate this project proposal to my lecturer ,family members and all my friends,
who have seen me through these years in university
ACKNOWLEGMENT
I wish to thank and acknowledge the insightful help from friends ,lecturers and family members
who've contributed to my research proposal and development
Sincere thanks go to my lecturer Mr Karama for the knowledge and neccesary guidance in the
process of project proposal writing as well as research activities.
OBJECTIVE
The objective of this project research is to find out and facilitate affordable and simple methods
of harnessing the subterranean water resources. In order to achieve this objective, this project
research will seek to design and develop an affordable percussion drill and a rope pump.
Percussion drilling is an old borehole drilling method. It has been in use by the Chinese for over
3000 years. Basically, the drilling operation involves the use of a heavy drilling bit that beats
upon the ground (and rock), thus chipping it into small pieces. These chippings are removed to
clear the hole. This method has been largely manual and when motorized, it is used in crude oil
2
well drilling In this project existing manual percussion drilling methods have been considered
and used to to develop an affordable powered percussion dill.
This percussion drilling rig is expected to drill boreholes to depths of about 60m.It is to be made
of locally of available materials, and will be easy to fabricate in any local metal workshop, by
local artisans. Most importantly, the overall cost of fabricating the drilling rig will be cheaper
than existing drilling rigs. The percussion drill will be powered by a 10 HP engine, via a base
power unit.
The second design in this project is the rope pump. The Rope pump is a lift pump with
continuous upward movement of a rope and a number of pistons in a tube. The Rope pump has
a relative lightweight construction and is made of locally available materials and can be
produced and
repaired locally. Most rope pumps are manual.
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
The quality of life of subsistence farmers around the world is impacted by many factors – one
of which is the access of water. Kenya’s economy is mainly driven by agriculture which actually
depends on rain which has turned invariant; this means that underground water has to be fully
utilized using affordable means to access it. Such means are needed to assist low income
farmers.
The effort has been ongoing for over a year and will continue in further years. The farming
implement consists of a base power unit which is comprised of a 10 horsepower Briggs &
Stratton gasoline engine mounted to a student designed chassis and gearbox. The chassis has
wheels which are driven by the engine to propel the base power unit and a secondary power
take-off shaft. The base power unit has already been designed by Penn State University.
3
The percussion drilling rig and rope pump are to be designed with three major considerations in
mind; the devices must be inexpensive, the device must effectively dig water wells using the
base power unit as an energy source, and the device must be safe and culturally acceptable.
The customer for the final product are farmers in rural Kenya who have little access to
disposable income, so in order for the project to be a success it is imperative that overall cost is
a top priority. High functionality of the product is essential to the project since the product will
be built using simple techniques and machines. Functionality for this project is defined as
having a product which is highly adaptable, effectively creates water wells, has low
maintenance needs, and can be operated by unskilled laborers. Additionally, focus is put on the
safety of the device and the product has also been designed with special attention paid to the
capabilities and mindset of the final customer, the rural Kenyan farmer.
This project will see the design and development of a low cost percussion drilling rig and a rope
pump. A final goal of the project is the employment of local artisans, using local materials, for
the fabrication of the implements
Drilling Principles
Any well construction method (hand-digging, human-powered drilling or ‘conventional’ drilling
requires three processes to be achieved:
1) Drilling tools must break, cut or otherwise penetrate the solid formation to be drilled.
In the case of unconsolidated materials such as sand and silt, this does not require much
energy; in the case of stiffer materials such as clays, or consolidated materials such as
laterite, sandstone, limestone, or granite, more (and sometimes a great deal more)
energy is required. Well construction methods use one or more of the following
methods to break or penetrate the formation:
a) Percussion (striking the formation with pick, chisel, end of pipe, or drill-bit);
c) High energy percussion with rotation (as in down-the hole hammer drilling);
5
d) Loosening by a water jet directed at the bottom of the hole.
2) The broken/loose material must be removed from the hole. This may be done by one of
two methods:
a) Alternating with breaking (i.e. break some, clean some, break again, ....). Hand-
digging proceeds this way, as does percussion drilling in hard ground;
“mud”, compressed air). This is the principle of mud-rotary drilling (using mud 3),
well jetting or wash boring (using water), and down-the-hole hammer drilling
(using compressed air).
Drilling constraints
No matter what drilling technique is used there are constraints on the process that must be
addressed, these including:-
The strength and degree of consolidation of the rock being drilled governs the energy
required to make the hole (weak unconsolidated rocks are much easier to drill than
hard consolidated rocks).
6
As the hole is deepened debris or cuttings need to be removed (otherwise the tools will
become fast in the hole).
Unconsolidated rocks may need a means of preventing them from collapsing as the
borehole is deepened (using either drilling mud or casing).
For stronger rocks the cutting tools will require cooling and lubrication.
Drilling methods
The following low-cost, appropriate drilling methods are described and illustrated on the
following pages:
1) Percussion drilling
2) Hand-auger drilling
3) Jetting
4) Sludging
5) Rotary-percussion drilling
6) Rotary drilling with flush
The table below may be used as a guide in the selection of the most appropriate drilling
method.
7
From the above table it evident that percussion drilling proves to be the most appropriate
method of drilling low cost boreholes though sometimes it might be slow especially when it
finds hard rocks. Rercussion drilling (even without rotary) can often produce faster penetrating
speed than conventional means such as rotary drill or diamond drill, especially in some hard
formations such as siliceous granite, sandstone, limestone, dolomite, etc12,13.
• Static and lower WOB. For example, ROP of 3.3m/h was achieved in percussion drilling with a
83/4 inch bit and a WOB of 4.5 ton, while in rotary drilling mode WOB needs to be at least
18.5 ton to achieve the same ROP17;
• Less contact time with rock: only 1 or 2 percent of total operational drilling time11, 17. This
leads to less bit abrasion, hence a longer bit life;
• Less use of other bottom hole assembly;
• Less hole deviation and easier control of deviation problem for straight hole drilling.
• Larger cuttings generated, which yields a better representation for geological study.
A Conceptual Model
8
A conceptual model of the drilling process is illustrated in Figure 1. There are four fundamental
processes that are to be characterized and simulated.
These are:
1) drillbit penetration with compression, rotation, and vibration;
2) stress propagation and damage accumulation;
3) rock failure and disaggregation; and
4) cuttings transport away from the bitface and up the wellbore annulus. These are coupled
physical processes, with different physics related to the tool and bit mechanics, rock mechanics,
and fluid and cuttings transport mechanism
Three failure mechanisms are proposed to account for rock damage and failure during its post-
yield state, including rock crushing and fracturing by compressive bit load, rock failure due to
excessive tensile forces, and rock fatigue by repetive compression-tension type of loading.
Corresponding to each mechanism, three rock failure criteria have been developed to
determine where and how the rock fails during percussive drilling
The rock will fail if minimum principal stress (σ3) is beyond tensile strength (σT):
Rock fatigue due to cyclic loading is partially simulated through the application of plastic post-
peak softening. Another approach is to implement some empirical correlation of rock strength
with number of loading cycles based on lab results (e.g. the curve shown in Fig. 3). A stress
10
wave with multiple impulses, which varies with time during hammer impact and decays
monotonically during hammer retreat, is applied as a loading condition. Rayleigh damping is
selected to partially account for energy loss in the rock because of internal rock friction or
interface slippage.
There are several drilling methods in existence. From the discussion given in chapter one it is
clear that the most appropriate drilling method according to the objectives of this project , is
the percussion drilling method.
11
CHAPTER 3
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
THE ROPE PUMP .
The Rope pump consists of a wheel and an endless rope with small pistons, made of
polyethylene (or car tire in home made models) that are attached to the rope at intervals
of 1 meter. The pistons fit, with a clearance of around 1 mm, in the PVC pipe called
‘rising main’. The rope and pistons move freely (and not in a pipe) down into the well. A The
wheel and handle are mounted on a support structure on top of the well. The rope and pistons
are lifted by the wheel. The water is brought up by the pistons and discharged at the surface.
When an additional wheel is added it can even be higher than ground level. Rope pumps can be
used on open hand dug wells or tube boreholes with a diameter as small as a 3 inch (75mm).
The Rope pump can be classified as a positive displacement pump producing a
constant output, unlike the pulsating flow of piston pumps. The weight of the water
column is equally carried by all pistons in the rising main. The pressure built up in this
tube is only the height of the water column between two pistons (1 m).
Finally, the absence of peak forces and the gradual filling of the pump tube, contribute
to good human ergonomics. The Rope pump has a relative lightweight construction and is made
of local obtainable materials
12
Walking beam: it is designed with rigidity being fore most in mind. It is made of carbon
steel and its main purpose is to translate the reciprocating motion of the crank and link
to the drill bit. It is pivoted at a post called the simpson post. It rocks about the pivot is a
see saw kind of motion. On one end the crank and links are attached through a hinge
joint and on the other end ( borehole end ) , a device called temper screw clamp is
attached via a short steel chain
Temper screw clamp; This is a standard device that can be bought in a hard
ware shop. It isAttached at the borehole end of the walking beam. The drilling
line (wire Rope) passes through the clamp. The sole purpose of the clamp is to
grip the drilling line during the upstroke and release it during the down stroke.
Therefore allowing the drill bit to fall freely by gravity.
Pulley and Reel; the drilling line is stored in a reel or spool attached athe base of the rig.
The drilling line (wire rope) is passed over the pulley at the rig head and a small slack is
allowed before passing it through the clamp. At the end of the drilling line, a heavy
drilling bit is attached.
Drill Bit. It is a heavy hollow tube, with weights that can be attached to increase its
weight. The drill bit has sharp teeth at the end which chip rock and break soil during the
drilling operation.
Other attachments; this include the bailer, whose main purpose is to remove soil
chippings from the hole as drilling proceeds. When the hole fills up with chippings and
mud. The drill bit is detached from the wire rope and the bailer is attached to the end of
the rope and lowered into the hole.
As the depth of the borehole increases, it is advisable to put a well casing to prevent the well
from collapsing especially in unstable soil formations.
Essentially a wire rope is made of several strands laid helically around a metallic or non metallic
core. The types of wire ropes are distinguished by the kind of core, number of strands; the
number, sizes and arrangement of the wires in each strand; and the way in which the wires are
laid or wound about each other.
Wire ropes made of galvanized wire, coated with zinc by the electro-deposition method
process are used in applications where additional protection against rusting is required. This
type of wire rope would be most suitable for the design proposed, considering the fact that the
wire rope will be exposed to water and other factors that fuel corrosion .
Rope Cores
In this application, the IWRC, (Independent Wire Rope Core) is most suitable. The IWRC is a
small 6x7 wire rope with a wire strand core and is utilized where great resistance to crushing
and distortion of the rope is required.
For certain applications, the IWRC has advantage over other wire ropes, specifically the WSC
(Wire Strand Core), in that it stretches at a rate closer to that of the rope itself
The percussion drilling rig is expected to range from Kshs 50000 to Kshs 65000.
References
"Borehole Drilling Rig for Water Wells." Consallen Group Sales Ltd. 23 Jan. 2008
<http://www.consallen.com/forager/cable-tool/>.
"Cable Drilling Tools and Accessories." Rampp Company. 2002. 26 Jan. 2008
<http://www.ramppco.com/home.html>.
"Cable Tool Rig." OTS Heavy Oil Science Center. Foster Learning Inc. 27 Jan. 2008
<http://www.lloydminsterheavyoil.com/cable.htm>.
14
"FAO: AFRICAN FARMERS COULD USE MORE LOW-COST WATER PUMPS." 12 Feb. 2008
Waternunc.Com. <http://www.waternunc.com/gb/fao18gb.htm>.
Kay, Melvyn, and Tom Brabben. Treadle Pumps for Irrigation in Africa. International Programme
for Technology and Research in Irrigation and Drainage. Rome:
Macharia, Peter. "Gateway to Land and Water Information: Kenya National Report." Fao.Org.
29 July 2004. Kenya Soil Survey. 23 Jan. 2008
<http://www.fao.org/ag/agl/swlwpnr/reports/y_sf/z_ke/ke.htm#hydro>.
McLellan, G W. "Cable Tool Drilling." Drilshop. 26 Oct. 1992. Westinghouse Hanford Company.
25 Jan. 2008 <http://www.drilshop.com/holes/cabtool.html>.
Pees, Samuel T. "PORTABLE CABLE TOOL DRILLING MACHINES." Oil History. 2004. Petroleum
History Institute. 28 Jan. 2008
<http://www.petroleumhistory.org/OilHistory/pages/Portable/portable.html>.
15