This paper reports measurements of the rheology of a range of water-based drilling muds at temperatures up to 130°C and pressures up to 1000 bar. The fluids are highly thixotropic; decoupling of temperature/pressure effects from those due to time-dependent structural changes was achieved by developing a sample preparation and handling procedure which ensures that all samples experience identical shear histories prior to study in the rheometer. This enabled essentially equilibrium flow curves to be determined over a shear rate range of 0 -1200 s-1 with a reproducibility of better than ±1 Pain stress.
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