Tribological characterization of the drill collars and casing friction couples

Drill collars are special pipes used in the drilling of wells for weighting the drill bit, enabling it to drill through the rock. In the drilling process, the drill collars are exposed to an intensive wear due to friction on inner surface of casing wall. In order to evaluate the tribological behaviour of this friction couple, paper presents the drill collars parent material, reconditioned and casing pipe chemical composition, microstructures, hardness and friction tests. For friction tests were prepared samples extracted from new and reconditioned drill collars and from casing pipes and tested on a universal tribometer. Were used plane-on-disk surface friction couples and tests were conducted at two sliding speeds and three normal loads for each materials couple. Plane static partner samples were extracted from casing pipes and disks samples were extracted from new and reconditioned drill collars. Were obtained friction coefficients values and also the temperatures increasing values due to friction working tests parameters. The temperature increasing values were obtained by measuring it with an infrared thermographic camera.