Originally posted by Axr2
The act of shutting down a database (the primary in this case) by itself does not cause a log switch or generate any additional archivelogs.
I was hoping for this but alas reality set in ;-)

So what I'll do for the test is

shutdown immediate
startup restrict
alter system archive log current on both nodes
wait for the logs to be sent to the standby
shutdown immediate
process with the test

thanks for the feedback!