Hypergraphical t-designs

We introduce a theory of hypergraphical t-designs. We show the existence of these designs and prove a finiteness theorem on these designs for infinitely many parameter sets. We also give effective bounds on the number of points in these cases. These results generalize some results on graphical t-designs of Alltop, Chee and Betten-Klin-Laue-Wassermann.     

Group divisible designs with block size four and two groups

We give some constructions of new infinite families of group divisible designs, GDD(n,2,4;λ₁,λ₂), including one which uses the existence of Bhaskar Rao designs. We show the necessary conditions are sufficient for 3?n?8. For n=10 there is one missing critical design. If λ₁>λ₂, then the necessary conditions are sufficient for . For each of n=10,15,16,17,18,19, and 20 we indicate a small minimal set of critical designs which, if they exist, would allow construction of all possible designs for that n. The indices of each of these designs are also among those critical indices for every n in the same congruence class mod 12.     

A complete solution to the existence and nonexistence of Knut Vik designs and orthogonal Knut Vik designs

Hedayat and Federer (Ann. of Statist.3 (1975), 445–447) proved that Knut Vik designs do not exist for all even orders. They gave a simple algorithm for the construction of such designs for all other orders, except when the order of the design is divisible by 3. The existence of Knut Vik designs of orders divisible by 3 was left unsolved by these authors. It is shown here that Knut Vik designs do not also exist for all orders divisible by 3. An easy algorithm based on a result of Euler is provided for the construction of orthogonal Knut Vik designs for all orders not divisible by 2 or 3. Therefore, we can say that Knut Vik designs and orthogonal Knut Vik designs of order n exist if and only if n is not divisible by 2 or 3. The results are based on the concepts of a super diagonal and parallel super diagonals in an n × n array, which have been introduced and studied for the first time here. Other relevant results are also given.     

Divisible design graphs

A divisible design graph is a graph whose adjacency matrix is the incidence matrix of a divisible design. Divisible design graphs are a natural generalization of (v,k,λ)-graphs, and like (v,k,λ)-graphs they make a link between combinatorial design theory and algebraic graph theory. The study of divisible design graphs benefits from, and contributes to, both parts. Using information of the eigenvalues of the adjacency matrix, we obtain necessary conditions for existence. Old results of Bose and Connor on symmetric divisible designs give other conditions and information on the structure. Many constructions are given using various combinatorial structures, such as (v,k,λ)-graphs, distance-regular graphs, symmetric divisible designs, Hadamard matrices, and symmetric balanced generalized weighing matrices. Several divisible design graphs are characterized in terms of the parameters.     

Supplement to multiplier theorems

A multiplier theorem in (J. Combinatorial Theory Ser. A, in press) is extended to cyclic group divisible difference sets (GDDSs) of small size. A multiplier theorem for abelian difference sets in (Proc. Amer. Math. Soc.68 (1978), 375–379) is extended to abelian GDDSs. A remark on the existence of cyclic affine planes is made based on a previously proved multiplier theorem.     

Divisible Designs Admitting GL(3, q) as an Automorphism Group

Starting from a 3-dimensional projective space we construct divisible designs admitting GL(3,q) as an automorphism group.     

New Z-cyclic triplewhist frames and triplewhist tournament designs

Triplewhist tournaments are a specialization of whist tournament designs. The spectrum for triplewhist tournaments on v players is nearly complete. It is now known that triplewhist designs do not exist for v=5,9,12,13 and do exist for all other except, possibly, v=17. Much less is known concerning the existence of Z-cyclic triplewhist tournaments. Indeed, there are many open questions related to the existence of Z-cyclic whist designs. A (triple)whist design is said to be Z-cyclic if the players are elements in Z_m∪A where m=v, A=∅ when and m=v-1, A={∞} when and it is further required that the rounds also be cyclic in the sense that the rounds can be labelled, say, R₁,R₂,… in such a way that R_j+1 is obtained by adding to every element in R_j. The production of Z-cyclic triplewhist designs is particularly challenging when m is divisible by any of 5,9,11,13,17. Here we introduce several new triplewhist frames and use them to construct new infinite families of triplewhist designs, many for the case of m being divisible by at least one of 5,9,11,13,17.     

Resolvable group divisible designs with block size four and index three

In this paper, we investigate the existence of resolvable group divisible designs (RGDDs) with block size four, group-type hⁿ and index three. The necessary conditions for the existence of such a design are n?4 and hn≡0. These necessary conditions are shown to be sufficient except for (h,n)∈{(2,4),(2,6)} and possibly excepting (h,n)=(2,54).     

Scheduling CCRR tournaments

In this paper, we construct CCRRS, complete coupling round robin schedules, for n teams each consisting of two pairs. The motivation for these schedules is a problem in scheduling bridge tournaments. We construct CCRRS(n) for n a positive integer, n?3, with the possible exceptions of n∈{54,62}. For n odd, we show that a CCRRS(n) can be constructed using a house with a special property. For n even, a CCRRS(n) can be constructed from a Howell design, H(2n-2,2n), with a special property called Property P. We use a combination of direct and recursive constructions to construct H(2n-2,2n) with Property P. In order to apply our main recursive construction, we need group divisible designs with odd group sizes and odd block sizes. One of our main results is the existence of these group divisible designs.     

Divisible designs with dual translation group

Many different divisible designs are already known. Some of them possess remarkable automorphism groups, so called dual translation groups. The existence of such an automorphism group enables us to characterize its associated divisible design as being isomorphic to a substructure of a finite affine space.      

Two-dimensional minimax Latin hypercube designs

We investigate minimax Latin hypercube designs in two dimensions for several distance measures. For the ?^∞-distance we are able to construct minimax Latin hypercube designs of n points, and to determine the minimal covering radius, for all n. For the ?¹-distance we have a lower bound for the covering radius, and a construction of minimax Latin hypercube designs for (infinitely) many values of n. We conjecture that the obtained lower bound is attained, except for a few small (known) values of n. For the ?²-distance we have generated minimax solutions up to n=27 by an exhaustive search method. The latter Latin hypercube designs are included in the website www.spacefillingdesigns.nl.     

A class of group divisible 3‐designs and their applications

In this article, we first show that a group divisible 3‐design with block sizes from {4, 6}, index unity and group‐type 2^m exists for every integer m≥ 4 with the exception of m = 5. Such group divisible 3‐designs play an important role in our subsequent complete solution to the existence problem for directed H‐designs DH_λ(m, r, 4, 3)s. We also consider a way to construct optimal codes capable of correcting one deletion or insertion using the directed H‐designs. In this way, the optimal single‐deletion/insertion‐correcting codes of length 4 can be constructed for all even alphabet sizes. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 17: 136–146, 2009     

Maximum uniformly resolvable designs with block sizes 2 and 4

A central question in design theory dating from Kirkman in 1850 has been the existence of resolvable block designs. In this paper we will concentrate on the case when the block size k=4. The necessary condition for a resolvable design to exist when k=4 is that v≡4mod12; this was proven sufficient in 1972 by Hanani, Ray-Chaudhuri and Wilson [H. Hanani, D.K. Ray-Chaudhuri, R.M. Wilson, On resolvable designs, Discrete Math. 3 (1972) 343-357]. A resolvable pairwise balanced design with each parallel class consisting of blocks which are all of the same size is called a uniformly resolvable design, a URD. The necessary condition for the existence of a URD with block sizes 2 and 4 is that v≡0mod4. Obviously in a URD with blocks of size 2 and 4 one wishes to have the maximum number of resolution classes of blocks of size 4; these designs are called maximum uniformly resolvable designs or MURDs. So the question of the existence of a MURD on v points has been solved for by the result of Hanani, Ray-Chaudhuri and Wilson cited above. In the case this problem has essentially been solved with a handful of exceptions (see [G. Ge, A.C.H. Ling, Asymptotic results on the existence of 4-RGDDs and uniform 5-GDDs, J. Combin. Des. 13 (2005) 222-237]). In this paper we consider the case when and prove that a exists for all u≥2 with the possible exception of u∈{2,7,9,10,11,13,14,17,19,22,31,34,38,43,46,47,82}.     

Holey Steiner pentagon systems

In this article, it is shown that the necessary conditions for the existence of a holey Steiner pentagon system (HSPS) of type hⁿ are also sufficient, except possibly for the following cases: (1) when n = 15, and h ≡ 1 or 5 (mod 6) where h ≢ 0 (mod 5), or h = 9; and (2) (h, n) ∈ {(6, 6), (6, 36), (15, 19), (15, 23), (15, 27), (30, 18), (30, 22), (30, 24)}. Moreover, the results of this article guarantee the analogous existence results for group divisible designs (GDDs) of type hⁿ with block-size k = 5 and index λ = 2. © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. J Combin Designs 7: 41–56, 1999     

On the Existence of Resolvable (K 3 + e)-Group Divisible Designs

In this paper, it is shown that the necessary conditions for the existence of resolvable (K ₃ + e)-group divisible designs with group-type g ^u are also sufficient.     

Embeddable transversal designs

The embeddability of certain (group) divisible designs in symmetric 2-designs is investigated. These designs are symmetric resolvable transversal designs. It is proved that all such transversal designs with v = 2k are embeddable and some necessary and sufficient conditions for other cases are given.     

Balanced Incomplete Block Designs with Block Size 9 and λ=2,4,8

The necessary conditions for the existence of a balanced incomplete block design on v points, with index λ and block size k, are that: $$\begin{gathered} {\text{ }}\lambda (v - 1) \equiv 0{\text{ mod (}}k - 1{\text{)}} \hfill \\ \lambda v(v - 1) \equiv 0{\text{ mod (}}k - 1{\text{)}} \hfill \\ \end{gathered} $$ In this paper we study k=9 with λ=2,4 or 8. For λ=8, we show these conditions on v are sufficient, and for λ=2, 4 respectively there are 8 and 3 possible exceptions the largest of which are v=1845 and 783. We also give some examples of group divisible designs derived from balanced ternary designs.