Volume entrained in the wake of a disc intruding into an oil-water interface

An object moving through a plane interface into a fluid deforms the interface in such a way that fluid from one side of the interface is entrained into the other side, a phenomenon known as Darwin's drift. We investigate this phenomenon experimentally using a disc which is started exactly at the interface of two immiscible fluids, namely oil and water. First, we observe that due to the density difference between the two fluids the deformation of the interface is influenced by gravity, and show that there exits a time window of universal behavior. Secondly, we show by comparing with boundary integral simulations that, even though the deformation is universal, our results cannot be fully explained by potential flow solutions. We attribute this difference to the starting vortex, which is created in the wake of the disc. Universal behavior is preserved, however, because the size and strength of the vortex shows the same universality as the potential flow solution.