Existence of resolvable optimal strong partially balanced designs (Q2492194)

This paper deals with the existence of resolvable optimal strong partially balanced designs (ROSPBD). Let \(X\) be a set of \(\nu\) elements and \(B\) denote a collection of \(b\) subsets of \(X\) (called blocks) such that each block is of size \(k\). The pair \((X,B)\) is called a partially balanced \(t\)-design, denoted by PBD\((\nu,b,k;\lambda,0)\), if each \(t\)-subset \((t\leq k)\) of \(X\) either appears exactly \(\lambda\) times in \(B\) or does not appear at all in any block. The parameter \(\nu\) is called the order of partially balanced \(t\)-design. If a partially balanced \(t\)-design is also, for \(0<s<t\), a partially balanced \(s\)-design, then it is called a strong partially balanced \(t\)-design and is written as SPBD\((\nu,b,k;\lambda,0)\). Furthermore SPBD\((\nu,b,k; \lambda,0)\) is called optimal if \(b\) is the maximum number of blocks in all SPBD\((\nu,b,k;\lambda,0)\). Here OSPBD\((\nu,k,\lambda)\) denotes such designs with \(t=2\). By partitioning \(B\) into partially resolutions classes \(B_1,B_2,\dots, B_g\) the concept of resolvability is introduced leading to ROSPBD\((\nu,k, \lambda)\). The main result of the paper is the following theorem: There exists an ROSPBD\((\nu,3,1)\) for any \(\nu\geq 3\) with the exception of \(\nu=6,12\).