Decomposable Symmetric Designs

The first infinite families of symmetric designs were obtained from finite projective geometries, Hadamard matrices, and difference sets. In this paper we describe two general methods of constructing symmetric designs that give rise to the parameters of all other known infinite families of symmetric designs. The method of global decomposition produces an incidence matrix of a symmetric design as a block matrix with each block being a zero matrix or an incidence matrix of a smaller symmetric design. The method of local decomposition represents incidence matrices of a residual and a derived design of a symmetric design as block matrices with each block being a zero matrix or an incidence matrix of a smaller residual or derived design, respectively.