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Field experience has shown that inadequate cuttings transportation and hole cleaning results in wellbore drilling challenges, such as pipe sticking, high torque and drag, low rate of penetration, formation damage, etc. Designing a drilling mud with optimum rheological properties would be crucial to improve cuttings transportation efficiency. Several studies have shown that drilling muds that combine polymers with silica nanoparticles (SiO₂ NPs) to form polymer nanocomposite (PNC) can effectively modify the rheology and enhance the filtration properties of water-based muds (WBMs). Studies on the significant decrease of the yield point that may lead to a huge reduction in the transport capacity of drilled cuttings using polypropylene-silica nanocomposite (PSNC) have not been reported. In this study, the effect of surface charge of newly developed PSNC on rheological and filtration characteristics of WBMs were …