Both intrusive and non-intrusive measuring techniques are employed for calibrating a new hypersonic wind tunnel developed by MBDA France in its Bourges-Subdray test centre under the aegis of DGA (French Ministry of Defence). Flow measurements are made in a 1.5 m diameter test section, at a single hypersonic Mach number. Calibration parameters include static and stagnation pressure, static and stagnation temperature, species concentrations, Mach number and flow direction. Intrusive measurements include Pitot-probes, cone-probes and stagnation temperature probes, gathered in a single cooled rake, specially designed by MBDA France for this tunnel. Some numerical simulation, performed later, predicted a large unstart of the test section due to the big obstruction created by the rake. A radical modification of the rake has been studied (suppression of 3 of the 6 arms) and considered for further test. In the meantime, a test run was performed to validate mechanical and thermal behaviour of the rake as well as its functionalities. Prior to that, a Tunable Diode Laser Absorption Spectroscopy (TDLAS) setup, developed at ONERA, was implemented and tested during an initial test run for non-intrusive in situ measurements of water vapour concentration and temperature.

Measurement data were successfully obtained and compared with data from RANS simulations performed by MBDA. The comparison exhibits around 10% discrepancy in terms of temperature and water vapour content.