To enhance the cooling effect in stagnation regions, a combined cooling method of sublimation and transpiration through locally activating transpiration was proposed and experimentally evaluated in the hot gas wind tunnel at the USTC. This combined cooling was achieved by sublimating an impermeable coating layer of low sublimation point material. The sintered porous plate used in this experiment consists of nickel-based super alloy with a porosity of 0.33, and Teflon is used as sublimation coating material. The cooling performances of the combined cooling method were compared with traditional transpiration cooling. The experimental data indicate that: (1) the coating layer sublimation mainly happens in the upstream and provides a flexible way to locally activate transpiration cooling, which means that where heat flux is the highest, the transpiration cooling is locally activated. (2) The combined cooling can effectively solve the problem of extremely high heat flux in stagnation regions, and reduce the consumption of transpiration coolant. Under the conditions of this experiment, at a coolant injection ratio of 0.60%, the cooling effectiveness at the leading edge of the specimen is 63% higher in comparison with traditional transpiration cooling. (3) The uniformity of temperature distribution can also be achieved by adjusting coolant mass flow rate for the combined cooling. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.