ABSTRACT
Sand production is a key issue in the Oil & Gas industry. Indeed, producing sand can cause deposition and plugging of the production zone, erosion of the tubing and surface handling problems. Industrial treatment consists to fix a steel screen at the well bore and to fill the surrounding annulus with gravel (gravel pack technique). But the installation is not simple and moreover the sand control limits oil production. The risk of sand is evaluated with mechanical calculation of the strain state around the well bore and comparison to rock mechanical properties (Veeken, 1991). However, volume and flow rate predictions have received little attention up to now. Some experiments have been done (Cerasi, 1998; Tremblay, 2003), hydro-mechanical model (Vardoulakis et al., 1996) and damage-mechanics approach (Shao & Marchina, 2002) have been proposed. A few granular approaches have been also done (Geilikman et al., 1997).
