No label defined (Q4948741)

A pairwise balanced design \(\text{PBD}(v,k)\) of order \(v\) with block sizes from \(K\) (\(K\) being a set of positive integers and \(v\) the cardinality of a finite set \(V\)) is a pair \((V,B^*)\), where \(B^*\) is a family of subsets (called blocks) of \(V\), satisfying the following conditions: (i) if \(B\in B^*\), then \(|B|\in K\), and (ii) each pair of distinct elements of \(V\) appears in exactly one block of \(B^*\). A mandatory representation design \(\text{MR}(v,K)\) is a PBD with at least one block of each size \(k\in K\). This paper is concerned with obtaining necessary existence conditions for \(\text{MR}(v,K)\) designs where \(K= \{3,k\}\). It is shown the above conditions are also sufficient for \(4\leq k\leq 50\) except for one case which is: there does not exist an \(\text{MR}(21,\{3, 6\})\). A table containing a summary of the results for \(4\leq k\leq 20\) is given at the end, and a table for \(k\leq 50\) is loated at ftp://ftp.math.uni\(_-\)rostock.de/pub/members/mgruttm/closure.htm.