Abstract: A series of hypersonic wind tunnel tests are implemented to estimate the aero-heat-ing flux of a test plate.The heat flux at the heated surface is not directly measured,but is esti-mated by solving an inverse heat conduction problem (IHCP)based on measured temperature at the back surface or inside of the plate.The most outstanding advantage of this method is that the temperature sensors do not contact with the high temperature outflow directly,but are embed ded inside the plate.Therefore,it provides an alternative approach to estimate the high tempera-ture surface heat flux for practical hypersonic vehicle flight tests.The primary aim of this paper is to verify the applicability of this method to predict the flow characteristics of the outflow filed. The hypersonic wind tunnel tests are implemented in FD-03 WT of China Academy of Aerospace Aerodynamics (CAAA).Some tests apply a smooth plate in general hypersonic wind tunnel tests;and others adopt a test plate bounded with a trip line to interrupt the boundary layer of the plate.As shown in the heat flux estimated results,severe changes in the outflow such as shock waves caused by the trip line can be predicted by the estimated heat flux.