Abstract: Performance of liner systems is very important to prevent groundwater contamination by landfills. In accordance with the case that groundwater drainage layers are built beneath the liner systems in sanitary landfills, a 1D analytical model for advection-diffusion-adsorption process of contaminants through a soil layer with finite thickness is proposed. Cauchy boundary is adopted to simulate the mass migration to a zero concentration circumstance. The results show that the analytical solution coincides well with that of a commercial numerical software. The analytical solution is reasonable and accurate. Parametric analyses show that adsorption, diffusion and advection all have great influence on the breakthrough curves. To improve the performance of clayey liners, the soil layer with high adsorption ability is suggested, and leachate head need to be strictly controlled.