A0579
Title: Uniform designs for experiments with branching and nested factors
Authors: Feng Yang - Sichuan Normal University (China) [presenting]
Abstract: The factors that only exist at certain levels of other factors are called nested factors. The factors that lead to such nested factors are called the branching factors. Experiments with branching and nested factors occur frequently in practical applications. Designing for such experiments is challenging because of the special relevancy between the branching and nested factors. Uniform designs are proposed for experiments involving branching and nested factors. A novel criterion is introduced to measure the uniformity of such designs, and the corresponding lower bound is also given. The construction methods of uniform designs for experiments with branching and nested factors are provided, and their effectiveness is verified by simulation comparisons and a practical manufacturing experiment. The proposed method allows each of the branching, nested and shared factors to be either qualitative or quantitative. Moreover, the run size and the levels of quantitative factors are very flexible, such that the method works well for physical and computer experiments.
