#DEFINE VISCOSITY FULL#

The water starts to stretch at the wall of the pipe because there is a force of friction between the pipe and the water. The water doesn’t simply move as a whole block, but rather as the force from the pump initiates movement. To get water moving through a pipe, we have to apply a force to the water through the action of a pump.

#DEFINE VISCOSITY FULL#

The tools and processes that we use to manage viscosity, borne out of our intuitive understanding of thickness, may also be over-simplified, resulting in a management process that fails to effect the full work potential of the fluid. While viscosity is a way of describing thickness, it is an over-simplification to consider viscosity as the same thing as thickness as we intuitively understand it. Since our intuitive understanding allows us to make reasonable assessments of thickness, we believe that we can use that intuitive understanding to make reasonable assessments of viscosity, and the resulting suspension and carrying capacity. We believe that if a drilling fluid has the right thickness, it must have the right viscosity and if it has the right viscosity, it must have good suspension characteristics and carrying capacity. We usually think of viscosity as thickness, and we tend to approach the task of managing viscosity from our intuitive understanding of thickness. Viscosity is an important property of drilling fluid because it’s the viscosity that determines the fluid’s ability to suspend and carry cuttings out of the hole.

Define viscosity