On symmetric nets and generalized Hadamard matrices from affine designs

Symmetric nets are affine resolvable designs whose duals are also affine. It is shown that. up to isomorphism, there are exactly four symmetric (3, 3)-nets (v=b=27,k=9), and exactly two inequivalent 9×9 generalized Hadamard matrices over the group of order 3. The symmetric (3, 3)-nets are found as subnets of affine resolvable 2-(27, 9, 4) designs. Ten of the 68 non-isomorphic affine resolvable 2-(27, 9, 4) designs are not extensions of symmetric (3, 3)-subnets, providing the first examples of affine 2-(q³, q², q²–1/q–1) designs without symmetric (q, q)-subnets.