Abstract
Determination of a sealant material’s ability to provide zonal isolation is important. Any potential well barrier material should ideally be tested and optimized under controlled, reproducible, and relevant conditions. Recent advances in experimental methods for qualification of materials beyond the API-10 standard have been published. For further development, the critical testing parameters relevant for these test methods should be investigated. The objective of this paper was to study the effect of test conditions such as cement curing time and scale dimensions. The curing and test conditions were found to be potentially important factors to ensure reproducible data and for understanding what is actually measured from the setup. For instance, the mechanical strength of cement might not be an adequate proxy to determine the hydraulic bond strength of a material. Also, the experimental determination of sealability of cement to a steel casing is dependent on several factors, such as curing time, presence of water during the cement hydration process, the cement plug dimensions, and the testing protocol itself.
