Filament-Reinforced Composite Material with Load-Aligned Filament Windings
AssigneeNine Downhole Technologies, LLC
InventorsDonald Roy Greenlee, Donald Jonathan Greenlee, Brian David Oligschlaeger
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A filament-reinforced composite material having with load-aligned filament windings enables improvement of mechanical properties for specific loading of parts made from the material. The orientation of the winding within the part may be changed depending on an orientation of an external load to the part. In one example, the part may be a slip in a frac plug or a bridge plug in a downhole application.
Claims41
A filament-reinforced composite slip, comprising:
- a matrix phase comprising a cross-linked polymer;
- an inclusion phase comprising filaments having a first orientation at a first end of the slip and having a second orientation at a second end of the slip opposing the first end, wherein the first orientation and the second orientation run at different angles with respect to an outer surface of the slip;
- wherein the first orientation is substantially parallel to the outer surface of the slip at the first end;
- and
- wherein the outer surface of the slip is enabled to engage an inner surface of a wellbore to secure a downhole assembly in the wellbore.
A method of forming filament-reinforced composite slips, the method comprising:
- assembling a plurality of segmented mandrels on a base tube, wherein each of the segmented mandrels has a small diameter portion at a first end and a large diameter portion at a second end, and wherein each successive segmented mandrel is placed on the base tube in a reversed orientation such that the small diameters and the large diameters of adjacent segmented mandrels respectively meet to form a substantially contiguous outer surface;
- winding a prepregnated filament over the outer surface to form alternating small diameter portions and large diameter portions corresponding to the segmented mandrels;
- curing the prepregnated filament wound over the segmented mandrels to form a specialized filament wound tube;
- and
- radially cutting the specialized filament wound tube at locations where the small diameters and the large diameters of adjacent segmented mandrels respectively meet to create cylindrical portions of filament-reinforced composite material and to release the segmented mandrels.
A filament-reinforced composite part, comprising:
- a matrix phase comprising a cross-linked polymer;
- an inclusion phase comprising a plurality of filaments having a first orientation at a first end of the part and having a second orientation at a second end of the part opposing the first end, wherein the first orientation and the second orientation run at different angles with respect to an outer surface of the part;
- and
- wherein the first orientation is substantially parallel to the outer surface of the part.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.