Design and use of an online drilling fluid pipe viscometer

Abstract

The accurate and frequent measurement of the drilling fluid's rheological properties is essential for drilling engineering. To measure drilling fluid's rheological properties automatically and frequently, we design an online pipe viscometer. First, we introduce the measurement principle, calculation flow chart, and design scheme. The pulsation damper and back pressure valve are used to stabilize flowrate and pressure which can improve the accuracy of the pipe viscometer. Then the errors under various static hole sizes are measured, and the static hole with the smallest error is selected as the measurement pipe of the pipe viscometer. Finally, various drilling fluids are tested. Compared with the standard six-speed viscometer, the shear stress error of the six standard shear rates (1022, 511, 340, 170, 10, 5s−1) is within 1Pa. The designed pipe viscometer can frequently measure drilling fluid's rheological properties and meets the needs of on-site online testing.