Direct Numerical Simulation of Turbulent Channel Flow
Using the Lattice Boltzmann Method
Dustin Bespalko and Andrew Pollard
Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada
Email: pollard@me.queensu.ca
A BSTRACT
In this paper, the Lattice Boltzmann Method (LBM) is
considered as an alternative method for direct numer-
ical simulation (DNS) of turbulent flows. The perfor-
mance of the LBM for simulating wall-bounded tur-
bulent flows is verified by performing a DNS of fully-
developed turbulent channel flow and comparing the
results to the database of [7]. Since the LBM used
in this work is confined to a uniform grid, the mini-
mal channel of [6] was simulated instead of the full
channel. The minimal channel has smaller dimensions
in the stream-wise and span-wise directions and there-
fore does not accurately simulate the largest structures
in the channel. However, the near-wall turbulent struc-
tures have been shown to be accurate [6]. The LBM re-
sults for the minimal channel show a directional match
for the second order statistics but there are a number of
discrepancies, most notably a 10% over prediction of
the peak stream-wise velocity fluctuations. This was
initially thought to be a result of poor resolution, but
further simulations at higher resolution showed no im-
provement. A simulation is currently running in which
the channel has been extended in the stream-wise di-
rection. The statistics from this simulation, while not
yet stationary, show an improvement over the minimal
channel results. Statistically stationary results for this
simulation will be presented in the conference presen-
tation.
1 I NTRODUCTION
Direct numerical simulations (DNS) of turbulent
flows are generally performed using spectral or finite
volume methods. Spectral methods transform the
Navier-Stokes (NS) equations into spectral space in
order to represent the flow field as a finite set of basis
functions. Since the derivatives in the NS equations do
not need to be approximated in the spectral method, it
is essentially free from truncation errors and thus has
superior accuracy. Also, the solution of the Poisson
equation for pressure, which is the most computa-
tionally expensive operation in most incompressible
methods, is reduced to a multiplication operation in
spectral space. This makes the spectral method very
computationally efficient. The main disadvantage
of spectral methods is geometric inflexibility. For a
simulation with complex geometry it becomes difficult
to chose appropriate basis functions that satisfy the
boundary conditions.
Finite volume methods have the advantage that they
can be applied on irregular and unstructured meshes.
For this reason, implementing finite volume methods
to solve problems with complex geometries is rela-
tively simple. In the finite volume method, the NS
equations are integrated over each control volume and
the convective and diffusive fluxes on the boundaries
of the control volume are estimated using a discretisa-
tion scheme. The disadvantage of this approach is that
truncation errors are introduced because the deriva-
tives in the NS equations are approximated by finite
differences. For a turbulent flow this has the effect of
reducing the largest wavenumer that can be resolved
accurately by the computational grid. This means that
the finite volume method must be applied on a finer
mesh than a spectral method to reduce the effect of the
truncation errors. Additionally, the Poisson equation
for pressure is solved in physical space, which is an
extremely computationally expensive operation and
accounts for up to 90% of the total computational time.
In this work we consider the lattice Boltzmann method
(LBM) as a competitor to spectral and finite volume
methods for simulations with complex geometries.
However, before performing simulations of comples
turbulent flows, we rigorously test the application of
the LBM to turbulent channel flow by comparing with
existing data available from the spectral simulation of
[7].
Past work has shown that the LBM is a promising tool
for DNS of turbulent flows; however, the majority of
this work has been focused on free shear flows. This
is because free shear flows can be simulated using
periodic and symmetry boundaries, which are straight-
forward to implement in the LBM. Additionally, free
shear flows can be implemented with a spectral code
for the purpose of benchmarking the performance of
the LBM. For the most part, detailed analysis, and
thus verification of, wall bounded turbulent flows
has been avoided. There are a few simulations of
turbulent channel flow in the literature but they are
either under-resolved [3] when compared to the
standard channel flow database, or do not report data
for higher-order statistics [1].
2 T HE L ATTICE B OLTZMANN
M ETHOD
The lattice Boltzmann method is a discrete particle
method based on kinetic theory. Instead of solving
for hydrodynamic variables (such as mass, momen-
tum, and energy), the working variable in the LBM
is the single particle distribution f (x, c,t). The single
particle distribution is a probability distribution func-
tion that represents the expected mass density of par-
ticles located at position x and time t moving with a
velocity c. The governing equation for the single par-
ticle distribution is the Boltzmann equation [4]:
∂f
+ c · ∇ f = Q( f , f ) (1)
∂t
where Q( f , f ) is the collision integral, which is re-
sponsible for modelling the particle interactions. Once
the single particle distribution is known, the corre-
sponding hydrodynamic quantities can be determined
by evaluating the velocity moments of f . For exam-
ple, the density and momentum can be calculated as
follows:
Z [9]:
ρ(x,t) = f (x, c,t)dc (2)
Z ν=
ρuα (x,t) = cα · f (x, c,t)dc (3)
The Boltzmann equation is difficult to solve for two
reasons: the single particle distribution is a function of
both position and velocity, and the collision integral
is complex. The dependence of f on velocity is a
problem because it means that the solution domain
for the single particle distribution is six dimensional.
This means that f must be discretised in both physical
and velocity space. Additionally, if there are a wide
range of particle velocities in the simulation, the
hydrodynamic moments in equations 2 and 3 become
very expensive to compute. However, it can be
shown that only a small set of particle velocities are
necessary for the Boltzmann equation to recover the
Navier-Stokes equations in the macroscopic limit. For
this reason, the Boltzmann equation can be simplified
by restricting the particles to travel on a highly sym-
metric lattice. A further simplification can be made by
replacing the collision integral with a relaxation type
model in which the current single particle distribution
is relaxed towards its local equilibrium value. This is
called the BGK approximation, which is named for
Bhatnagar, Gross, and Krook [2].
Making the above simplifications yields the discrete
Boltzmann equation with the BGK approximation:
∂ fi (eq)
+ ci · ∇ fi = ω( fi − fi ) (4)
∂t
(eq)
where ω is the relaxation parameter and fi is the
local equilibrium value for fi . The discrete Boltzmann
equation is a set of partial differential equations; one
for each discrete velocity ci in the model. Since each
fi is only a function of x and t these equations can be
discretised in space and time using a finite difference
method. For the special case where ∆x = c∆t the lattice
Boltzmann equation is obtained.
(eq)
fi (x + ci∆t,t + ∆t) − fi(x,t) = ω( fi − fi ) (5)
This is the evolution equation used in the lattice Boltz-
mann method. The finite difference approximations
for the spatial and temporal derivatives are only first
order accurate, but it can be shown that the LBM is
second order if the viscosity is computed as follows
 
1 1 1
− (6)
3 ω 2
Once the fi ’s are known, the hydrodynamic quantities
can be computed by the following summations:
 W7−18 = 1/36
N−1
ρ(x,t) = ∑ fi (x,t) (7) (10)
i=0

N−1 The lattice Boltzmann equation can be separated into

ρuα (x,t) = ∑ ciα · fi (x,t) (8)
i=0
The other two components of an LBM model are the
lattice and the equilibrium distribution. In the simula-
tions used in this work, the D3Q19 lattice was used.
This lattice has three dimensions, and 19 discrete ve-
locities. The D3Q19 lattice velocities are shown in
graphical form in figure 1.
an advection and collision step. In the collision step,
the single particle distributions are relaxed towards
their local equilibrium values by an amount dictated
by the relaxation rate ω. Next, the new particle
distributions are streamed to their neighbouring lattice
sites in the advection step. Using a multi-scale
expansion, the LBM can be shown to be equivalent
to the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations in the
low-Mach number limit.

The advantages of the LBM are the following: the

advection process is linear; the pressure is calculated
using an equation of state, eliminating the need for
pressure velocity coupling; it is isotropic up to second
order, reducing the effect of grid orientation; and it is
simple to code for massive parallelisation.

3 S IMULATION D ETAILS
One major drawback of the LBM is that currently
it can only be used with a uniform grid. This
means that the grid resolution must be the same in
all three coordinate directions. In a simulation of
Figure 1: D3Q19 lattice velocities.
turbulent channel flow the grid resolution required in
The equilibrium distribution for the LBM is based on the wall-normal direction is much higher than that
the Maxwell distribution, which is the equilibrium dis- needed in the stream-wise and span-wise directions.
tribution for the Boltzmann equation. To generate the Ideally, a stretched grid would be implemented to
LBM equilibrium distribution function, a low-Mach exploit this feature to make the simulation more
number assumption is made. This assumption allows computationally efficient. Since this is currently not
the Maxwell distribution to be expanded as a Taylor possible with the LBM, the computational cost of
series about zero velocity. The terms up to second or- simulating a channel flow using the LBM is much
der in u are retained to give: greater than that of a simulation using a spectral
method. However, turbulent channel flow is an
ideal simulation to run in order to benchmark the
accuracy of the LBM for wall bounded turbulent flows.
3(ci · u) 9(ci · u)2 3u2
 
(eq)
fi = Wi ρ 1 + + − (9)
c2 2c4 2c2
In this work, the minimal flow unit was simulated
where the constants Wi are the quadrature coefficients instead of the channel of [7] to reduce the computa-
(eq) tional time. The minimal flow unit restricts the size
that ensure that the moments of fi corresponding to
of the channel in both the stream-wise and span-wise
the conserved quantities are identical to the moments
directions. Due to its smaller size, the minimal
of fi . The values of these coefficients for the D3Q19
channel is not large enough to accommodate all of the
lattice are:
largest scales in the channel, and thus there are errors
induced by enforcing periodic boundaries. However,
[6] showed that, provided the channel is larger than
W0 = 1/3 a critical size, the minimal channel can sustain a
W1−6 = 1/18 turbulent flow and the near-wall turbulence statistics
agree well with the data from the full channel. By
simulating the minimal channel, the LBM can be
implemented with a uniform grid and the simulation
can be performed in a reasonable amount of time.
The Reynolds number, based on the mean center-
line velocity and the channel half-width was 3300.
The dimensions of the simulation domain were
2δ × 0.3πδ × πδ for the wall-normal, span-wise, and
stream-wise directions respectively. The domain was
meshed with a uniform grid with 181 × 86 × 282
nodes. This corresponds to a cell size of y+ = 2,
which is approximately equal to the Kolmogorov
length scale. The probability density values for the
model were initialised to their equilibrium values
for Poiseuille flow. In order to induce turbulence, a
random noise was applied directly to the populations
for a short time using a linear congruential random
number generator.
The wall boundaries were implemented using the
bounce-back boundary condition. In this method, the
particle distributions that stream to a boundary node
during the streaming step are simply reversed. If there
is no collision step performed at the boundary, this
condition results in a wall located approximately half-
way between the boundary node and its neighbouring
fluid node. The bounce-back boundary condition is
nominally first order accurate, but [5] showed that it
improves to second order when the flow is aligned
with one of the lattice directions.
The flow in the channel was driven using a body force,
and periodic boundaries were used in the stream-wise
and span-wise directions. A body force was used in
favour of a pressure gradient in order to minimise the
effect of compressibility. The LBM is equivalent to
solving the compressible NS equations with a constant
temperature and sound speed. Therefore, if a pressure
gradient was established across the channel, it would
lead to a corresponding density gradient as well. The
body force is implemented by adjusting the particle
distributions at each lattice site after the collision pro-
cess. This was done using the following equation:
fi = fi + Bi ρ(ci · g) (11)
where g is the body force vector and the weighting fac-
tors Bi are equal to:
B1−6 = 1/6
B7−18 = 1/12
(12)
The LBM code has been parallelised using MPI as
the message passing API. The code was run on a
SUN Fire 15K shared-memory machine using 64
processors. The simulation completed 12 million time
steps, corresponding to approximately 8000 large
eddy turn-over times.
4 R ESULTS
During the simulation, all of the relevant time averaged
quantities needed to compute turbulence statistics up
to second order were recorded. These included:
• Density (ρ)
• Density squared (ρ2 )
• Velocity (u, v, w).
• Velocity squared (u2 , v2 , w2 ).
• Reynolds shear stresses per unit mass uv, vw, uw.
• Viscous shear stresses τxy , τyz , τxz
In order to scale the statistics, the average wall shear
stress was calculated by extrapolation. This value was
then used to calculate the friction velocity (uτ ) and the
viscous length scale (δν ).
The mean velocity profile for the channel is shown in
Figure 2. The mean velocity is scaled by uτ and the
distance from the wall is scaled by δν . The points
in the figure represent the data from both sides of the
channel simulated using the LBM. The solid line is the
data from the spectral simulation of Kim, Moin, and
Moser [7]. As this figure shows, the mean velocity
profile produced by the LBM simulation matches the
database to within approximately 1%. Figure 3 shows
a comparison of the mean pressure profile for the LBM
simulation and the channel flow database. The pres-
sure in the LBM simulation is computed from the den-
sity using the ideal gas law, which for the LBM is:
ρ
p= (13)
3
The pressure is scaled using the mean wall shear stress
and plotted relative to the pressure on the wall. The
LBM simulation is within approximately 10% of the
 20 run with a resolution of 1.5 wall units that showed no
appreciable change.

15
3.0
u+

10
2.5

5 2.0

u′ rms
1.5

+
0
1.0 10.0 100.0 1.0
y+ 0.5
0.0
Figure 2: LBM results for the mean velocity profile:
1.0 10.0 100.0
◦ lower wall, + upper wall, — Kim, Moser, Moin
+
(1987) [7] y

Figure 4: LBM results for the stream-wise RMS veloc-

0
ity fluctuations: ◦ lower wall, + upper wall, — Kim,
−0.2 Moser, Moin (1987) [7]

−0.4
1.5
p+

−0.6

−0.8 1.0
v′ rms
+

−1
1.0 10.0 100.0 0.5
+
y

Figure 3: LBM results for the mean pressure profile: 0.0

◦ lower wall, + upper wall, — Kim, Moser, Moin 1.0 10.0 100.0
(1987) [7] y +

results from [7]. Figure 5: LBM results for the wall-normal RMS veloc-
ity fluctuations: ◦ lower wall, + upper wall, — Kim,
Moser, Moin (1987) [7]
The root-mean-square velocity fluctuations in the
stream-wise, wall-normal, and span-wise directions
Currently, a simulation is running in which the length
are shown in figures 4 - 6. These figures show a
of the channel has been extended in the stream-wise
good match for the wall-normal velocity fluctuations,
direction. The new dimensions of this channel
but significant discrepancies in the stream-wise and
are 2δ × δ × 16δ, and the resolution in each of the
span-wise directions. The most significant difference
directions is 2 wall units. This channel is more than
between the two simulations is an over prediction of
four times longer than the minimal channel in the
the stream-wise velocity fluctuations by over 10%
stream-wise directions, and thus uses approximately
at the peak value. Initially, this discrepancy was
four times the number of lattice sites.
explained as a resolution problem because it was not
observed in the minimal channel simulation of [6] and
an over prediction of the peak stream-wise velocity Given the fact that this simulation contains roughly
fluctuations has been shown by [8] to be caused by four times as many computational nodes, it theoreti-
insufficient resolution. However, a simulation was cally should take four times longer to run. However,
 1.5 time averaged over a much larger interval in order for
the statistics to become stationary.

1.0 The simulation of the extended channel has currently

completed 650, 000 iterations, which corresponds to
w′ rms
+

approximately 400 large eddy turn-over times. The

0.5 statistics for this simulation are not yet stationary, but
they already show an improvement for the stream-wise
and span-wise velocity fluctuations (figures 8 and 9).
This simulation will be continued and statistically
0.0 stationary results will be presented in the conference
1.0 10.0 100.0
presentation.
+
y

Figure 6: LBM results for the span-wise RMS veloc-

ity fluctuations: ◦ lower wall, + upper wall, — Kim, 3
Moser, Moin (1987) [7] 2.5
2
1.0

u′ rms
1.5
0.8 +
1
0.6
0.5
+
u ′ v′

0.4 0
1.0 10.0 100.0
0.2 +
y
0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 Figure 8: LBM results for the stream-wise RMS ve-
locity fluctuations (long channel simulation): ◦ lower
y+ wall, + upper wall, — Kim, Moser, Moin (1987) [7]

Figure 7: LBM results for the Reynolds shear stress:

◦ lower wall, + upper wall, — Kim, Moser, Moin
(1987) [7] 1.5
1.25
in practice the statistics for this simulation converge
faster than those from the minimal channel simulation. 1
w′ rms

This is because of the existence of stable states in 0.75

+

the minimal channel in which turbulent flow exists

near only one wall. In this state the flow on the 0.5
non-turbulent wall is not steady, but has a small
temporal variation and is nearly two-dimensional [6]. 0.25
The turbulence periodically shifts from one wall to 0
the other, with a brief interval in between in which 1.0 10.0 100.0
the flow on both walls is turbulent. In the minimal +
y
channel simulation of [6] this periodic transition was
shown to have only a small effect on the low order
statistics. However, due to the fact that switching of Figure 9: LBM results for the span-wise RMS velocity
the turbulence from one wall to the other occurs over fluctuations (long channel simulation): ◦ lower wall,
a long characteristic time (approximately 1000 large + upper wall, — Kim, Moser, Moin (1987) [7]
eddy turn-over times), the minimal channel must be
 5 C ONCLUSIONS AND F UTURE W ORK
In this work fully developed turbulent channel flow
was simulated with the LBM in order to benchmark
its accuracy when simulating wall bounded turbulent
flows. The minimal channel was originally simulated
in order to reduce computational time. This was a
concern due to the fact that the LBM is currently
restricted to a uniform grid, and thus the resolution
could not be decreased in the stream-wise and span-
wise directions. The second order statistics for this
simulation showed a directional match with the spec-
tral simulation of [7]. However, there were a number
of discrepancies between the two simulations, most
notably the LBM over predicted the peak stream-wise
velocity fluctuations by over 10%.
A new simulation is currently running in which the
channel has been extended by four times in the stream-
wise direction. The results from this simulation, while
not yet statistically stationary, show a much more
promising match with the channel flow database. The
statistically stationary results for this simulation will
be presented in the conference presentation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The authors would like to thank the Natural Science
and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) for fi-
nancial support of this project, and the High Perfor-
mance Computing Virtual Laboratory (HPCVL) for
the use of their computational resources.
R EFERENCES
[1] G. Amati, R. Benzi, and S. Succi. Extended self-
similarity in boundary layer turbulence. Physical
Review E, 55(6):6985–6988, June 1997.
[2] P. Bhatnagar, E. Gross, and M. Krook. A model
for collision processes in gases. I. small amplitude
processes in charged and neutral one-component
systems. Physical Review, 94(3):511–525, 1954.
[3] J. Eggels. Direct and large-eddy simulation of
turbulent fluid flow using the lattice-Boltzmann
scheme. International Journal of Heat and Fluid
Flow, 17(3):307–323, 1996.
[4] S. Harris. An Introduction to the Theory of the
Boltzmann Equation. Dover Publications Inc.,
2004.
[5] X. He, Q. Zou, L.-S. Luo, and M. Dembo. An-
alytic solutions of simple flows and analysis of
nonslip boundary conditions for the lattice Boltz-
mann BGK model. Journal of Statistical Physics,
87:115–136, 1997.
[6] J. Jiméniz and P. Moin. The minimal flow unit in
near-wall turbulence. Journal of Fluid Mechanics,
225:213–240, 1991.
[7] J. Kim, P. Moin, and R. Moser. Turbulence
statistics in fully developed channel flow at low
Reynolds number. Journal of Fluid Mechanics,
177:133–166, 1987.
[8] A. G. Kravchenko and P. Moin. On the effect of
numerical errors in large eddy simulations of tur-
bulent flows. Journal of Computational Physics,
131:310–322, 1997.
[9] D. A. Wolf-Gladrow. Lattice-Gas Cellular Au-
tomata and Lattice Boltzmann Models. Lecture
Notes in Mathematics. Springer-Verlag, 2000.