A New Model for Cleaning Small Cuttings in Extended-Reach Drilling Based on Dimensional Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Authors in their paper have reported a study on a new model for cleaning small cuttings in extended-reach drilling based on dimensional analysis. The study is good, however, there is sufficient scope to improve the quality of the paper technically. Authors are suggested to revise the manuscript addressing the comments below:

·        Mention the importance of the study, novelty and applicability.

·        Dimensional analysis is done by conventional pi method. What is new?

·        The results should be discussed more elaborately with fundamental of science and referring relevant supporting literature.

Authors in their paper have reported a study on a new model for cleaning small cuttings in extended-reach drilling based on dimensional analysis. The study is good, however, there is sufficient scope to improve the quality of the paper technically. Authors are suggested to revise the manuscript addressing the comments below:

·        Mention the importance of the study, novelty and applicability.

·        Dimensional analysis is done by conventional pi method. What is new?

·        The results should be discussed more elaborately with fundamental of science and referring relevant supporting literature.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The paper entitled “A New Model for Cleaning Small Cuttings in Extended-reach Drilling Based on Dimensional Analysis” establishes the wellbore cleaning model. The authors used the data fitting method.

1.    On page 8, Fig 3 and Fig 4, please list the total number used when generating the fitting curve. If necessary, please list all the experimental conditions of each dataset in the supporting information. Also, in lines 190-191 and lines 200-201, the authors stated that the error of most of the data is less than 8%. Please provide the mean square error for the whole dataset.

2. On page 7, lines 182-183, the authors stated that “Since the experiment eccentricity of the drill pipe, the concentration of cutting injection, the density of cutting and the acceleration of gravity are constant values, also the well inclination angle during the range of the well inclination angle obtained in the experiment has little impact on the thickness of the cutting bed, thus the dimensionless terms 1 , 2 , 6 , 7 and 9 are not considered.” The author stated that these items are not important based on engineering experience. It would be more scientistic sounds if the authors could use Principle Component Analysis (PCA) to decrease the dimension of the features.

3. The findings presented in Section 3 of the paper lack depth and practical applicability. It would significantly enhance the paper's value if the authors could provide more insightful and practical results. Adding further details or discussing the implications of the results in terms of real-world drilling scenarios would make this section more impactful.

Please correct grammar errors, especially for punctuation. 

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

As per reviewers' comments and suggestions, authors have revised their manuscript. The quality of the paper is now improved. The revised manuscript may be accepted for publication.

As per reviewers' comments and suggestions, authors have revised their manuscript. The quality of the paper is now improved. The revised manuscript may be accepted for publication.

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have solve several of my comments.