3D earthquake analyses of complex engineering structures such as arch dams are based on the determination of a range of eigenvalues and associated eigenvectors. Despite the variety of practical numerical eigensolutions available in the literature, the method of subspace iteration was found to offer time efficient and accurate eigenvalue solutions appropriate for large systems with high degrees of freedom. This paper presents the theoretical principles of the well known subspace iteration method implemented in the existing ADAD-IZIIS software for finite-element analyses of arch dams.