Error analysis of well path survey calculation methods

By use of numerical method, a kind of reference curve could be constructed to analyze the error of well path survey calculation, and the reference conditions for error analysis of survey calculation were obtained. And on this basis, several usual survey calculation methods such as average angle method, corrected average angel method, balance tangent method, minimum curvature method and cord segment method were examined. The result indicates that these survey calculation methods' errors have the similar error characteristics. The survey calculation error takes linear variation tendency with the variation of measure depth parameter. On the error diverse points' plots, the dispersivity of the error is weak and prone to be the systematic error. Through the analysis of the relative large sample space, the result indicates that all survey calculation methods error could be expressed approximately by one uniform formula if undergoing comprehensive well trajectory's error analysis. The parameters of the uniform formula were calculated by means of the least square method.