Homogenization of pinning conditions on periodic networks

This paper deals with the description of the overall effect of pinning conditions in discrete systems. We study a variational problem on the discrete in which pinning sites are modeled as network subsets on which concentrated forces are imposed. We want to determine the asymptotic effect of pinning conditions on a periodic lattice as its size vanishes. Our analysis is performed in the framework of Γ-convergence and highlights the analogies and differences with the corresponding continuous problem, i.e. periodically perforated domains. We derive a functional form for the limit energies which depends on the relationship between the space dimension and the growth rate of the interaction functions.