Printed in Great Britain Construction of orthogonal and nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes

We propose a method for constructing orthogonal or nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes. The method yields a large Latin hypercube by coupling an orthogonal array of index unity with a small Latin hypercube. It is shown that the large Latin hypercube inherits the exact or near orthogonality of the small Latin hypercube. Thus, effort for searching for large Latin hypercubes, that are exactly or nearly orthogonal, can be focussed on finding small Latin hypercubes with the same property. We obtain a useful collection of orthogonal or nearly orthogonal Latin hypercubes, which have a large factor-to-run ratio and the results are often much more economical than existing methods. Some key words: Computer experiment; Correlation matrix; Index; Latin hypercube; Orthogonal array. 1