Numerical analysis of frac plug: slips anchoring and damage to the casing

A frac plug is a piece of downhole equipment used to block an oil well during the hydraulic fracturing process. One of the most important parts of a frac plug is the slip, which anchors to the casing of an oil well and keeps the frac plug in its position during the process. In this study, finite element analysis (FEA) is employed to simulate the behavior of the wicker-type slip under working conditions. A 3-D model was employed for cyclic symmetric analysis in ABAQUS software. The results show that the teeth of the slip which are near the cone, are more critical. Moving further from the cone, the contact stress and the plastic deformation decrease on the teeth of the slip and the corresponding position on the casing. Damage to the casing was assumed to be related to the plastic deformation amount. The obtained results are in correlation with the previously published works.