1.1 Oil Based Drilling Mud System Rheology
The design of an effective drilling mud rheology system means that the drilling mud has been conditioned to act properly despite terrible circumstances such as a modification in the rheological formation of the mud, extreme temperatures and pressures. The paper aims at studying the rheological properties of oil based drilling fluids using a lab mad model and a drill bench simulation after which its use in pressure control and well stability maintenance would be analysed. In order to achieve this, a drilling mud sample was developed from scratch to be used in the experiment. The characterization of rheological properties was started since schwedoff in 1890 who worked on colloidal gelatin solutions from which he discovered that the torque experience in a drilling mud system was not proportional to the angular velocity. This contradicted newton’s theory hence it was concluded that drilling muds were non-Newtonian fluids. Trouton used the yield stress value in 1904 to achieve a value that matched the flow rate proportionally while in the years 1922, 1925 and 1926; Bingham, Ostwald, Herschel and Bulkley respectively continued to develop on the notion from schwedoff about the non-Newtonian nature of drilling muds. The use of factors such as gel strength, yield stress, viscosity, and shear stress which can only be obtained from drilling mud experiments are used to develop models which are compared to the previously listed rheological models and this is necessary for the successful characterization and study of the rheological properties of emulsion muds and their use for pressure control.