Abstract: Definitive screening (DS) designs, first proposed by Jones and Nachtsheim (2011), have received much attention due to their good design properties and run-size economy. This paper investigates the structure of three-level DS designs and suggests a theoretically-driven approach to constructing DS designs for any number of run size. This construction method is computationally efficient and universal to designs with even or odd number of factors. Many constructed DS designs possess high (if not optimal) D-efficiencies, that are comparable to those found in the literature.

Key words and phrases: Definitive screening (DS) designs, conference matrix, circulant matrix, D-optimal.