Abstract
In this paper we study periodic elastic rod-structures which are locally anisotropic and symmetric with respect to some plane. In order to find the effective behavior and approximate local behavior (so-called corrector-results) of such structures, one has to solve a finite number of boundary-value problems on one period of the rod-structure, the cell problem. For the solution of the cell-problem, it is shown that the components of the displacement satisfy either Neumann or Dirichlet conditions on the sides of the cell of periodicity parallel with the symmetry-plane. This is very useful from a computational point of view since the derived boundary conditions can easily be incorporated into standard numerical schemes. We also study resultant forces and moments and their variations along the rod-structure in several types of cases, even when no symmetry is required.