A benchmark suite for choke pressure control in managed pressure drilling

The control of choke pressure in Managed Pressure Drilling (MPD) for wells several kilometers deep is complicated by distributed dynamics and resonances, operating point variations, and input nonlinearities, and thus represents a uniquely challenging real-world control problem. To facilitate the standardized evaluation of advanced choke pressure control methods, this paper presents a benchmark suite for MPD choke pressure control. The suite includes a simulator comprising three test wells, representing Land/Shallow-water MPD, Deepwater MPD, and Controlled Mud Level (CML) operations, built on a model previously validated against field data. The suite features seven benchmark scenarios covering nominal operations, pipe connections, pump shutdowns, and stability margin assessment, alongside Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and acceptance criteria. A gain-scheduled PI controller is included to serve as a performance baseline and highlight challenges. The simulator is provided both as a Simulink package and as an executable with a UDP interface, and supports simulation speeds up to 50 − 180 × real-time on standard hardware. The complete benchmark suite requires MATLAB and is available on GitHub and on Zenodo (DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.19202953 ).