Numerical methods for multilattices

Among the efficient numerical methods based on atomistic models, the quasi-continuum (QC) method has attracted growing interest in recent years. The QC method was first developed for crystalline materials with Bravais lattice and was later extended to multilattices [Tadmor et al., Phys. Rev. B, 59 (1999), pp. 235-245]. Another existing numerical approach to modeling multilattices is homogenization. In the present paper we review the existing numerical methods for multilattices and propose another concurrent macro-to-micro method in the numerical homogenization framework. We give a unified mathematical formulation of the new and the existing methods and show their equivalence. We then consider extensions of the proposed method to time-dependent problems and to random materials.