• Journal of Korean Society of Environmental Engineers
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.359-364
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• 2012

In order to prevent the decrease in well efficiencies due to friction in the axial flow in long, large-diameter laterals, a multi-diameter lateral was devised and tested through lab-scale sand-box experiments to assess its performance. In the experiment, three different production rates were applied over the multi-diameter and the three single-diameter laterals to obtain the hydraulic head distributions for each, which was used to assess the performance of the laterals. Results elucidated that the multi-diameter lateral reduced the material cost by more than a third, in comparison to the single-diameter lateral, while maintaining the production rate at higher than 93%, proving its superiority. Furthermore, results indicated that exit velocities exceeding 0.8 m/sec in horizontal wells tended to distort the hydraulic head distribution near the exit, providing evidence of its inefficiency.