This paper introduces almost partitionable sets to generalize the known concept of partitionable sets. These notions provide a unified frame to construct $\mathbb{Z}$-cyclic patterned starter whist tournaments and cyclic balanced sampling plans excluding contiguous units. The existences of partitionable sets and almost partitionable sets are investigated. As an application, a large number of maximum or maximal optical orthogonal codes are constructed. These maximal optical orthogonal codes fail to be maximum for just one codeword.

中文翻译：

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可分区集、几乎可分区集及其应用

本文介绍了几乎可分区的集合来概括已知的可分区集合的概念。这些概念提供了一个统一的框架来构建 $\mathbb{Z}$-循环模式的初学者惠斯特锦标赛和不包括连续单元的循环平衡采样计划。研究了可分割集和几乎可分割集的存在性。作为一种应用，构建了大量的最大或最大光正交码。这些最大的光正交码对于仅一个码字来说不能是最大的。