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The imposed pressure gradient and Darcy's law give a linear velocity profile. Use $U$ as the mean pore velocity in the contaminant advection-diffusion equation; thenThe last conditions express zero transverse solute flux under the standard closed-layer interpretation. Transverse exchange through the layer boundaries would change this cell problem and requires additional boundary data. If the prescribed mean speed is a Darcy velocity, its corresponding pore velocity is that speed divided by porosity.

The given parameter is the ratio of transverse mixing time to travel time:Thus transverse dispersion mixes the contaminant across the layer many times during its passage along the long layer. Different fluid speeds still matter: repeated exchange between slow and fast portions produces Taylor dispersion, rather than transport solely at each parcel's original speed. The averaged description applies after $t\gg H^2/D_T$ and on longitudinal scales large compared with the distance travelled during that mixing time.

Write $C=\overline{c}$ and, to leading correction order, $c=C+\chi (y)C_x+\cdots$, with $\overline{\chi }=0$. Taking $C_t\simeq -U{C}_x$ in the local equation gives the cell problemWith $\eta =y/H$, its solution isAveraging the local advection-diffusion equation now yields $C_t+U{C}_x=[D_L-\overline{(u-U)\chi }]C_{xx}$. An integration by parts in the cell problem gives $-\overline{(u-U)\chi }=D_T\overline{({\chi }^{\prime }{)}^2}$. Since ${\int }_0^1({\eta }^2-\eta {)}^{2}d\eta =1/30$, the effective equation isThis is Taylor dispersion in a linear porous-layer velocity profile. For a localized pulse away from the inlet and outlet, its mean position advances at $U$ and its longitudinal variance grows as $2D_{\mathrm{eff}}t$.

For the inlet step, use the semi-infinite inlet approximation $x>0$, $C(0,t)=1$, $C(x,0)=0$ and $C\to 0$ as $x\to \infty$ at fixed $t$. The resulting constant-concentration inlet solution isOne derivation is to Laplace transform in time: $\tilde{C}(x,p)=p^{-1}\exp [(U-\sqrt{U^2+4D_{\mathrm{eff}}p})x/(2D_{\mathrm{eff}})]$. Inverting gives the two complementary error functions. Their sum is one at $x=0$; for fixed $x>0$ both terms vanish as $t\downarrow 0$, and substitution verifies the averaged equation. Retaining only the first term gives the familiar moving error-function front far from the inlet when longitudinal advection dominates diffusion, but does not satisfy the inlet condition exactly.

For a literal finite layer $0<x<L$, a downstream boundary condition is also needed once the outlet influences the solution. The PDF's step-inlet request specifies only the initially clean region $x>0$, so the formula above is the semi-infinite/long-layer solution, not a claim of a unique finite-interval solution with unspecified outlet data.