“…The macroscopic response of a given microscopic periodic composite medium can often be summarized by an effective material property (e.g., a conductivity or permeability tensor), a fact placed on a rigorous footing by the field of homogenization (for a review see [14]). Application areas span all of the major elliptic PDEs, including the Laplace equation (thermal/electrical conductivity, electrostatics and magnetostatics of composites [12,27,35,38]); the Stokes equations (porous flow in periodic solids [18,26,50,75], sedimentation [1], mobility [69], transport by cilia carpets [16], vesicle dynamics in microfluidic flows [58]); elastostatics (microstructured periodic or random composites [29,36,61,64]); and the Helmholtz and Maxwell equations (phononic and photonic crystals, bandgap materials [42,65]). Application areas span all of the major elliptic PDEs, including the Laplace equation (thermal/electrical conductivity, electrostatics and magnetostatics of composites [12,27,35,38]); the Stokes equations (porous flow in periodic solids [18,26,50,75], sedimentation [1], mobility [69], transport by cilia carpets [16], vesicle dynamics in microfluidic flows [58]); elastostatics (microstructured periodic or random composites [29,36,61,64]); and the Helmholtz and Maxwell equations (phononic and photonic crystals, bandgap materials [42,65]).…”