Sample Data Expert System(SDES)--Knowledge Based Systems, Inc., P.O. Box 9930, College Station, TX 77842-7930; (409) 260-5274
Dr. Arthur Keen, Principal Investigator
Mrs. G. Renee Hisaw, Business Official
DOE Grant No. DE-FG03-98ER82606
Amount: $74,954

Well drilling units have become saturated with large amounts of equipment sensory data monitoring instrumentation. Misinterpretation of equipment states, conditions, and required operator actions, based on static displays of sensory data, occurs often and can lead to unexpected equipment failures during production cycles, potential damage to other assemblies that operate within the drilling unit, and overall poor well drilling. This project will design, prototype, and implement an automated expert system to support operator decisions during well drilling operations. The system will be a fuzzy logic, rule based system that will apply a knowledge base of logical rules to monitored sensory readings. The result will be a display of equipment and drilling status/states, conditions, and required operator actions.

Commercial Applications and Other Benefits as described by the awardee: The well drilling industry drilled 26,203 wells in 1998, a 14% increase of 1996. The estimated loss in maintenance and operational costs attributed to operator/engineer misinterpretation of sensory data is $109 million, each year. Implementation of the proposed system would substantially reduce this cost.