An algorithm to compute the square root of a 3\(\times 3\) positive definite matrix (Q1262698)

The paper deals with the problem of the computation of the square root of a \(3\times 3\) positive definite matrix. This problem plays an important role for instance in nonlinear shell analysis, where in each element of a domain discretization of stretch tensor U has to be computed from its square, the strain tensor C: \(U^ 2=C.\) The author first reviews some methods known in the literature. The first one employs the Cayley-Hamilton theorem, circumventing the usual expensive procedure of solving the eigenvalue problem for C. Then the problem was reduced to find the solution of a quartic equation on the first invariant of U. Moreover, it was shown that the first invariant can be directly computed from the eigenvalues of U. The author proposes a variant of the previous method, showing that the solution of the quartic equation can be unambiguously selected and it is dependent on the computation of one eigenvalue of U. The resulting algorithm is slightly simpler and has performed better than having to compute all eigenvalues of U.