No label defined (Q4337355)

\textit{A. Hartman} and \textit{K. Heinrich} [in `Graphs, matrices and designs', R. S. Rees ed., Lect. Notes Pure Appl. Math. 139, 171-204 (1993; Zbl 0789.05004)] determined the existence of pairwise balanced designs on \(v\) points with a hole of size \(k\) and all blocks of size at least 3, except possibly when \[ \begin{multlined} (v,k)\in \{(17,6), (21,8), (26,9), (28,11), (29,10), (29,12), (30,11),\\ (33,14), (35,12), (37,14), (38,13), (39,14), (42,17), (47,18), (49,20), (55,20)\}. \end{multlined} \] Subsequently, \textit{G. Heathcote} [J. Comb. Des. 1, No. 5, 359-378 (1993; Zbl 0817.05021)] observed that there is no such design on 17 points with a hole of size 6. In this paper designs are constructed for all remaining pairs of parameters. The strategy involves, in each case, initially determining a block (hole) of size \(k\) and a set of blocks of size at least 4 and then applying a hill-climbing algorithm to complete the design using blocks of size 3.