In this paper, we apply the local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) method
to 2D Keller--Segel (KS) chemotaxis model. We improve the results
upon (Y. Epshteyn and A. Kurganov, SIAM Journal on Numerical Analysis,
47 (2008), 368-408) and give optimal rate of convergence under
special finite element spaces before the blow-up occurs (the exact solutions are smooth).
Moreover, to construct physically
relevant numerical approximations, we consider $P^1$ LDG scheme and develop a positivity-preserving
limiter to the scheme, extending the idea in (Y. Zhang, X. Zhang and
C.-W. Shu, Journal of Computational Physics, 229 (2010), 8918-8934).
With this limiter, we can prove the $L^1$-stability of the numerical
scheme. Numerical experiments are performed to demonstrate the good
performance of the positivity-preserving LDG scheme. Moreover, it
is known that the chemotaxis model will yield blow-up solutions
under certain initial conditions. We numerically demonstrate how to
find the approximate blow-up time by using the $L^2$-norm of the
$L^1$-stable numerical solution.