Blocking response surface designs

The design of experiments involving more than one blocking factor and quantitative explanatory variables is discussed, the focus being on two key aspects of blocked response surface designs: optimality and orthogonality. First, conditions for orthogonally blocked experiments are derived. Next, an algorithmic approach to compute D-optimal designs is presented. Finally, the relationships between design optimality and orthogonality in the context of response surface experiments are discussed in detail.