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Incoming links: Wall friction in the Navier slip boundary condition
Navier slip boundary condition Created 2026-10-06 Updated 2026-10-13
The Navier slip boundary condition allows a fluid to slide tangentially past a solid wall while resisting that motion through wall friction in the Navier slip boundary condition. For parallel flow past a flat, impermeable wall translating uniformly with tangential velocity Uw, write the fluid's tangential velocity as u and its relative tangential velocity as urel=u−Uw. Thenwhere b is the slip length, also written ℓs. The unit normal n points from the wall into the fluid, and ∂nu=n⋅∇u is the normal derivative. The separate no-penetration boundary condition requires (u−Uw)⋅n=0: tangential sliding does not allow flow through the wall.
urel=b∂nu,b≥0,
The sign convention matters. In a channel 0<z<H, the lower wall has inward unit normal +ez and the upper wall has inward unit normal −ez. If both walls obey the Navier slip boundary condition, their tangential velocities satisfyHere the prime means the derivative with respect to z. Using +bHu′(H) at the upper wall would reverse the friction law. The examples Couette flow with a slipping lower wall and planar Poiseuille flow with equal wall slip use different upper-wall boundary conditions.
u(0)−U0=b0u′(0),u(H)−UH=−bHu′(H).
This flat-wall formula is a local linear model. On a curved wall the Newtonian fluid stress tensor must supply the tangential traction; the normal derivative alone generally misses curvature terms. The author-written review by Lauga, Brenner and Stone states the full strain-based condition with the unit normal directed into the liquid. [ref]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0501557. Lauga, Brenner and Stone, Microfluidics: The No-Slip Boundary Condition (2005), §2.1, equation (2)
The same review credits Navier's 1823 treatise with the linear slip law. Its history is a reminder that the no-slip boundary condition is an experimentally successful model, whose validity depends on the interface and scale. The history here follows that review rather than a new reading of Navier's original memoir. [ref]
https://arxiv.org/pdf/cond-mat/0501557. Lauga, Brenner and Stone (2005), §2.1: the nineteenth-century boundary-condition debate