Designs for Screening Experiments with Quantitative Factors

Most screening experiments in chemometrics and science are quantitative, i.e. continuous factors. These factors should be 3-level and the designs for these experiments should also be 3-level. However, popular designs for screening experiments are still Plackett-Burman designs (PBDs) and 2-level fractional factorial designs (FFDs) such as resolution III and resolution IV FFDs. This chapter introduces the conference matrices as an alternative to PBDs and resolution III FFDs and definitive screening designs, a conference matrix-based class of designs, as an alternative to resolution IV FFDs. A table of conference matrices of up to order 32 and examples are also provided for illustration.