CONCLUSIONS
ship set of decoupler pylons was designed, analyzed and fabricated f o r a flight test evaluation. The pylons were designed for GBU-8 carriage and the analyses and tests described here were conducted to complete the evaluation of the GBU-8 carriage and to evaluate the potential of these pylons for carriage of the B-61 weapon. A
final analysis of the airplane with the GBU-8 configuration was conducted. This analysis was based upon using a complete airplane model which was tuned to match the pylon ground test results. The flutter analysis using this model indicated that the decoupler pylon was equally as effective as was indicated by the preliminary analyses. A nonlinear flutter analysis which included the linkage friction which was measured during the ground tests was conducted. This analysis indicated that the pylon will break out of the friction at small angles and the friction will have no detrimental effect upon the flutter characteristics. A
Wind tunnel tests of the flutter model have been conducted on the B-61 configuration on two previous occasions. The first of these tests was conducted with the original model wings. In this test flutter was encountered. The second of these tests was conducted on the model with the flutter suppression wings. In this test flutter was not encountered. Ground vibration tests of the model were conducted with both sets of wings to determine if differences between the two sets of wings could be detected. These test results indicated very small differences between the two sets of wings. These small differences do not appear to be large enough to explain the difference obtained during the two wind tunnel tests of the configuration.
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