The petroleum industry is essential for the economy as it greatly contributes to energy security. The purpose of petroleum engineering is to export the storage site of oil and natural gas, then extract petroleum via modern instruments. Petroleum then undergoes refinery and storage stages for industrial applications.

However, there are many bottleneck problems based on mechanics. For instance, the algorithm of signal processing in geological exploration, drilling dynamics, and instability of well wall, the flow of drilling fluid, and the flow of oil and gas in the wellhole. Moreover, there are problems in terms of the mechanism of enhancing oil recovery (EOR), safety check-in chemical vessels filled with oil and gas, mechanism of hydraulic fracture, the process of shale gas mining, mechanical properties of gas hydrate, fluid flow in pipelines, removal of pollutants in pipe surfaces and rheology of bitumen. In addition, another bottleneck problem can be found when doing a strength and fatigue analysis of petroleum equipment. Mechanics is the science related to the motion and deformation of structures and fluids. The characteristic advantage of mechanics is mainly attributed to the ability of modelling and numerical simulation, and thus it is a powerful tool to solve many problems in petroleum engineering.

The aim of this Special Issue is to bring together original research and review articles highlighting recent advances in mechanics extracted from petroleum engineering. Submissions should discuss the use of modelling and numerical simulations in the industry. We also welcome research considering wetting properties and the seeping of fluids.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Modelling of drilling in petroleum engineering
• Contact, deformation, buckling, and dynamics in slender rods
• Surface wetting on solid materials, especially on rock surfaces
• Numerical simulation of fluid flow in pipelines and small holes (e.g., finite element method (FEM), computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and molecular dynamics)
• Safety evaluation of metal structures in petroleum equipment (e.g., machines, platforms, vessels, and pipes)
• Mechanics in geological exploration or geophysics (e.g., wrinkling of stratum and rock mechanics)
• Modelling and simulation of hydraulic fracture and shale gas mining
• Rheological mechanics of soft matter in petroleum (e.g., wax and bitumen)