Stress Caging
Stress Caging is the technique of strengthening the wellbore so that the hole can be drilled without inducing downhole losses. Stress caging not only helps avoid downhole complications by avoiding loss of circulation but could also reduce the number of casing strings required for drilling the well to the planned target depth.
The technique achieves the objective of formation strengthening by treating weak formations with drilling fluids containing engineered particulate lost circulation materials. The process of stress caging aims to increase hoop stresses in near wellbore regions and seal shallow fractures at the wellbore formation interface continuously while drilling.
Stress Caging - An effective wellbore-strengthening approach