Near-symmetric divisible designs

We construct some classes of -near-symmetric divisible designs by permutation group methods. We also define and study Paley divisible designs which generalize the well-known class of Paley 2-designs.Dedicated to professor Giuseppe Tallini     

Lifting of divisible designs

The aim of this paper is to present a construction of t-divisible designs (DDs) for t > 3, because such DDs seem to be missing in the literature. To this end, tools such as finite projective spaces and their algebraic varieties are employed. More precisely, in a first step an abstract construction, called t-lifting, is developed. It starts from a set X containing a t-DD and a group G acting on X. Then several explicit examples are given, where X is a subset of PG(n,q) and G is a subgroup of GL_n + 1(q). In some cases X is obtained from a cone with a Veronesean or an h-sphere as its basis. In other examples, X arises from a projective embedding of a Witt design. As a result, for any integer t ≥ 2 infinitely many non-isomorphic t-DDs are found.Dedicated to Walter Benz on the occasion of his 75th birthday.     

A note on new semi-regular divisible difference sets

We give a construction for new families of semi-regular divisible difference sets. The construction is a variation of McFarland's scheme [5] for noncyclic difference sets.This work is partially supported by NSA grant # MDA 904-92-H-3067.     

A note on weighing designs

Summary Banerjee [1], [2] has shown that the arrangements afforded by a Balanced Incomplete Block Design can be used as an efficient spring balance design. Such designs suffer from one drawback viz., there are only a few or no degrees of freedom left for the estimation of error-variance,σ ². To overcome this difficulty, it has been suggested that the whole design may be repeated a certain number of times to get an estimate of the error variance. In the present note an attempt has been made to give an alternative design where there is no necessity of such repetition. It has been also shown that these designs give a lesser variance of the estimated weights than the repeated design. Institute of Agricultural Research Statistics     

New constructions of divisible designs

A construction is given for a (p^2a(p+1),p²,p^2a+1(p+1),p^2a+1,p^2a(p+1)) (p a prime) divisible difference set in the group H×Z²_pa+1 where H is any abelian group of order p+1. This can be used to generate a symmetric semi-regular divisible design; this is a new set of parameters for λ₁≠0, and those are fairly rare. We also give a construction for a (p^a−1+p^a−2+…+p+2,p^a+2, p^a(p^a+p^a−1+…+p+1), p^a(p^a−1+…+p+1), p^a−1(p^a+…+p²+2)) divisible difference set in the group H×Z_p2×Z^a_p. This is another new set of parameters, and it corresponds to a symmetric regular divisible design. For p=2, these parameters have λ₁=λ₂, and this corresponds to the parameters for the ordinary Menon difference sets.     

A structural classification of SR group divisible designs

A simple method of construction of a semi-regular (SR) group divisible design from another SR group divisible design is given. Using this method, 111 available SR designs from Clatworthy (1973) and John and Turner (1977) are systematically classified into 20 classes. This procedure may produce new nonisomorphic solutions for known designs.     

Spreads and group divisible designs

By removing the components of at-spread of a finite projective spacePG(d, q) from each hyperplane ofPG(d, q), the blocks of a regular group divisible design are obtained We characterize geometrict-spreads as thoset-spreads which are such that the dual of is also a group divisible design.     

On affine translation divisible designs

We prove that a translation divisible design (TDD) with an abelian translation group can be embedded in PG (n,q) for some n2. Moreover we study affine TDD's showing that they have an (elementary) abelian translation group. A construction for TDD's with an abelian translation group which are not affine is given too.     

D‐optimal designs and group divisible designs

We obtain new conditions on the existence of a square matrix whose Gram matrix has a block structure with certain properties, including D‐optimal designs of order , and investigate relations to group divisible designs. We also find a matrix with large determinant for n = 39. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 14: 451–462, 2006     

A note on 3-blocked designs

A blocking set of a design different from a 2-(λ + 2, λ + 1, λ) design has at least 3 points. The aim of this note is to establish which 2-(v, k, λ) designs D with r ≥ 2λ may contain a blocking 3-set. The main results are the following. If D contains a blocking 3-set, then D is one of the following designs: a 2-(2λ + 3, λ + 1, λ), a 2-(2λ + 1), λ + 1, λ), a 2-(2λ - 1, λ, λ), a 2-(4λ + 3, 2λ + 1, λ) Hadamard design with λ odd, or a 2-(4λ - 1, 2λ, λ) Hadamard design. Moreover a blocking 3-set in a 2-(4λ + 3, 2λ + 1, λ) Hadamard design exists if and only if there is a line with three points. In the case of 2- (4λ - 1, 2λ, λ) Hadamard design with λ odd, we give necessary and sufficient conditions for the existence of a blocking 3-set, while in the case λ even, a necessary condition is given. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Composite construction of group divisible designs

Two new methods of constructing group divisible designs are given. In particular, a new resolvable solution for the SR 39 is presented.     

On divisible designs and local algebras

We study the action of the group PGL(m,A) on the projective space PG(m − 1,A) over a finite commutative local algebra A in order to construct a class of divisible designs, denoted by D_m(d,A), which is the classical one of 2-designs (of points and of flats of fixed projective dimension) in the case where A is a field. We also study the constructed divisible designs with particular care for the case where d = m − 1. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Semi-regular divisible designs and Frobenius groups

We study and characterize semi-regular (s, k, λ₁, λ₂)-divisible designs which admit a Frobenius group as their translation group. Moreover, we give a construction method for such designs by generalized admissible triads.     

A contraction of square transversal designs

In this paper we show that if a square transversal design TD_λ[k;u], say D(=(P,B)), admits a class semiregular automorphism group G of order s, then we have a by matrix M with entries from G∪{0} satisfying , where , if i=j, and , otherwise. As an application of (*), we show that any symmetric TD₂[12;6] admits no nontrivial elation. We also obtain a result that gives us a restriction on the existence of elations of putative projective planes of composite order.     

A note on partially balanced ternary designs

Two new methods of constructing a series of partially balanced ternary designs are presented. One from a BIB design and a PBIB design, and the second from a PBIB design alone, obtained by method of differences in both the cases.     

A note on mean square spline approximation

A method of obtaining the mean-square spline approximation by the use of dynamic programming is indicated.     

Group divisible designs with large block sizes

For positive integers n, k with \(3\le k\le n\), let \(X=\mathbb {F}_{2^n}\setminus \{0,1\}\), \({\mathcal {G}}=\{\{x,x+1\}:x\in X\}\), and \({\mathcal {B}}_k=\left\{ \{x_1,x_2,\ldots ,x_k\}\!\subset \!X:\sum \limits _{i=1}^kx_i=1,\ \sum \limits _{i\in I}x_i\!\ne \!1\ \mathrm{for\ any}\ \emptyset \!\ne \!I\!\subsetneqq \!\{1,2,\ldots ,k\}\right\} \). Lee et al. used the inclusion–exclusion principle to show that the triple \((X,{\mathcal {G}},{\mathcal {B}}_k)\) is a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \(2^{2^{n-1}-1}\) for \(k\in \{3,4,5,6,7\}\) where \(\lambda _k=\frac{\prod _{i=3}^{k-1}(2^n-2^i)}{(k-2)!}\) (Lee et al. in Des Codes Cryptogr,  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10623-017-0395-8, 2017). They conjectured that \((X,{\mathcal {G}},{\mathcal {B}}_k)\) is also a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \(2^{2^{n-1}-1}\) for any integer \(k\ge 8\). In this paper, we use a similar construction and counting principles to show that there is a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \((q^2-q)^{(q^{n-1}-1)/(q-1)}\) for any prime power q and any integers k, n with \(3\le k\le n\) where \(\lambda _k=\frac{\prod _{i=3}^{k-1}(q^n-q^i)}{(k-2)!}\). Consequently, their conjecture holds. Such a method is also generalized to yield a \((k,\lambda _k)\)-GDD of type \((q^{\ell +1}-q^{\ell })^{(q^{n-\ell }-1)/(q-1)}\) where \(\lambda _k=\frac{\prod _{i=3}^{k-1}(q^n-q^{\ell +i-1})}{(k-2)!}\) and \(k+\ell \le n+1\).