Construction of group divisible designs and rectangular designs from resolvable and almost resolvable balanced incomplete block designs

Abstract

In this paper, we present a general construction of group divisible designs and rectangular designs by utilising resolvable and “almost resolvable” balanced incomplete block designs. As special cases, we obtain the following E-optimal designs: (a) Group divisible (GD) designs with λ 2= λ 1+1 and (b) Rectangular designs with 2 rows and having λ 3= λ 2−1= λ 1+1. Many of the GD designs are optimal among binary designs with regard to all type 1 criteria.