For linear elastic problems that are properly set up (no rigid body rotation or translation),
the stiffness and mass matrices and the system in general are positive definite.
These are the easiest matrices to deal with because the numerical methods commonly
applied are guaranteed to converge to a solution. When all the qualities of the system are
considered:
Only the smallest eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the lowest modes are desired
The mass and stiffness matrices are sparse and highly banded
The system is positive definite
a typical prescription of solution is first to tridiagonalize the system using the
Lanczos algorithm. Next, use the QR algorithm to find the eigenvectors and eigenvalues of
this tridiagonal system. If inverse iteration is used, the new eigenvalues will
relate to the old by , while the eigenvectors of the original can
be calculated from those of the tridiagonalized matrix by:
where is a Ritz vector approximately equal to
the eigenvector of the original system, is the matrix
of Lanczos vectors, and is the eigenvector
of the tridiagonal matrix.