Most everyone has heard the acronym KISS and knows generally what it stands for: keep it simple, stupid. Or, how about “keep it short and sweet”? Or “keep it short and simple”? There are many iterations for the saying, but I think it’s safe to say we get the point.
We, as mud/fluid engineer types, tend to get a bit on the windy side when discussing how something works. In this article, I want to boil it down to five basic facts and discuss the options available to the drill contractor when they encounter hard-to-deal-with soils. These soils can be anything from sticky, swelling clays and shales to fine, medium or coarse sands and cobbles. Now, we don’t need a Ph.D. in polymer science to figure out which additives to use. Experts already figured that part out years ago. My goal is to explain which polymers deal with which soil types and … to keep it short and simple!