Fragile and normal viscoelastic components of drilling fluid gels

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a non-transitory memory coupled to the one or more processors, wherein the memory comprises instruction configured to cause the one or more processors to perform operations for:
• receiving a measured decay of a microstructure of a gelled fluid over a time period in response to a shear stress imposed on the gelled fluid exceeding peak gel strength of the gelled fluid;
• modeling the decay of the microstructure during the time period to form a decay model;
• identifying at least two components of the decay model comprising a fast decay component and a slow decay component, wherein the fast decay component decays more quickly than the slow decay component and a wellbore is drilled when the gelled fluid is in the wellbore;
• and
• activating a drilling pump based on timing of the fast decay component and the slow decay component relative to an acoustic velocity of the gelled fluid.