This study investigates the effect of tip-mounted store mass on the flutter behaviour of an F-16 fighter jet model wing using wind tunnel testing and numerical analysis.A 1/8-scale polycarbonate wing was tested with six external store configurations of identical geometry but different masses, representing varying inertia through aluminium and steel materials.Experiments were conducted in the Ankara Wind Tunnel, while numerical analyses were performed in ZAERO using modal data obtained from finite-element models.Seven configurations, including a clean wing baseline, were evaluated with stores mounted on F-16 under-wing stations.A comparison of ZAERO's g-method and k-method showed that the kmethod exhibits closer agreement with experimental results.The findings reveal that increasing store mass leads to a pronounced reduction in flutter frequency and flutter speed, and this trend becomes increasingly non-linear for heavier configurations.These results underscore the dominant role of tip-mounted inertia in subsonic flutter behaviour and demonstrate that simplified flat-plate wing models can reliably capture mass-driven aeroelastic trends.
Yaman et al. (Thu,) studied this question.