Fatigue Testing a Mechanized Percussion Well Drilling System for Water Access in Western Africa

The Mechanized Percussion Well Drilling (MPWD) Collaboratory project seeks to design a simple mechanized well drilling system for drilling shallow water wells in Western Africa. Our client, Open Door Development (ODD), seeks to make water accessible to all in the region, but has had difficulty drilling through hard soil layers. To combat this problem, the MPWD team has worked closely with Mr. Joseph Longenecker to develop a mechanized percussion well drilling rig that is capable of drilling through these harder layers. Currently, the MPWD team is seeking to provide recommendations to improve the lifetime of our client’s new, fully mechanized rig design. This year, our team’s work has been focused specifically on analyzing the lifetime of the rig’s driveline chains and also on its frame. For the driveline chains, the team will be conducting fatigue testing on a model of the driveline system to determine which type of chain should be used on the rig. To determine the lifetime of the frame, the team will be performing a series of static, buckling, and fatigue finite element analyses on the rig’s frame. The most recent accomplishments of the MPWD team have nearly proved that their design for the loading application will be feasible for use on the actual testing rig and that multiple studies of finite element analysis can be performed to simulate the different rig frame loading scenarios.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1019/thumbnail.jp

Mechanized Percussion Well Drilling

The Mechanized Percussion Well Drilling Project seeks to design a simple mechanized well drilling system to be used for drilling shallow water wells in Burkina Faso, Africa. These systems will be operated by local drilling teams, allowing them to earn an income for themselves and their families. Currently our end users, the Burkinabe Well Drilling Team, have trouble drilling through hard rock layers, and often must abandon holes due to inadequate equipment. The goal of this project is to enable the drillers to efficiently drill through these rock layers with a mechanized percussion rig and supporting drilling equipment. One of the areas the project has focused on this year was testing our new steel cathead, a critical piece of the drilling rig which severely wore during in-country testing in the summer of 2017. After 40 hours of testing with no visible wear, we were confident that our new cathead would be sufficient. We also designed a new, heavier drill bit that was more able to concentrate the force of each impact. Finally, we tested our system using ropes that can be bought in Burkina Faso to ensure our system will be sustainable for our end users.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2020/1003/thumbnail.jp