Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2001 iii Paper 44 4 i Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Far downslope let the typical height be and the cross-slope half-width be . Slenderness gives and slowly varying longitudinal thickness. In a steady porous gravity current, the longitudinal spreading term is smaller than advection by the ratio , while longitudinal diffusion relative to transverse diffusion is of order . Thus the leading balance isIntegrating across the finite current, with zero flux through its dry side edges, makes the leading downslope volume flux constant:Balancing the two differential terms givesEliminate to find the far-downslope width of a constant-flux porous current:The typical height is correspondingly . For every , the width exponent is less than one half, so and , consistent with the discarded longitudinal terms. The porosity exponent drops out because it enters storage, which has zero time derivative in this steady problem.