Using Affine Planes to Partition Full Designs with Block Size Three

Ken Gray1, Anne Penfold Street1, R G Stanton2
1Mathematics, The University of Queensland, Brisbane 4072, Australia
2Computer Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg R3T 2N2, Canada

Abstract

We provide the specifics of how affine planes of orders three, four, and five can be used to partition the full design comprising all triples on \(9, 16\), and \(25\) elements, respectively. Key results of the approach for order five are generalized to reveal when there is potential for using suitable affine planes of order \(n\) to partition the complete sets of \(n^2\) triples into sets of mutually disjoint triples covering either all \(n^2\), or else precisely \(n^2 – 1\), elements.