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Permalink Reply by Brian Powers on January 28, 2013 at 7:59am

Jeffrey -

This sounds like a fun and informative project; I hope that you receive a lot of useful ideas and that your son does well in his effort and learns about this great business.

It's easier for me to envision ideas on how to simulate a conventional well system than a faulted one.

 

I would start with  concentric strings of PVC pipe. Place a perforated string (drill some holes along the length)  of inner pipe inside a non-perforated PVC pipe. Put a cap on the inner string and cross it over to a bicycle tire stem. Fill the annular space between the inner and outer strings with wet sand-box sand.

 

If you want to get real creative, figure out a way to make two of these wells and connect them with horizontal PVC pipes.

 

When ready to pressurize, use an air tank or small air compressor to add pressure to one well, then use a tire gauge to measure the pressure on the other well.

I'm not as sure about how to chart the results other than the good old-fashioned way of recording the data vs. time and plotting it on cartesian graph paper or MS Excel

 

I'm sure as the Dad, and likely CFO of this project, the last thing you want are a bunch of over-engineered "Cadillac ideas"

 

I spent the last half of my 30 year career mentoring young folk, students and young engineering professionals alike, and I'd be happy to give you more feed-back as the project progresses.

 

Please contact me if you would like to exchange more thoughts.

 

Brian

 

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