Transverse studies with ions at SPS flat bottom

The LHC injectors upgrade project (LIU) aims at con-solidating and upgrading the existing accelerator chain atCERN in view of the increased beam performance requiredfor the High Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC) project. For theion chain, the losses and emittance growth in the SPS imposepresently the main performance limitation. The significantbeam degradation encountered on the long injection plateauhas been studied during the 2016 MD runs with Pb82+. Inthis report we present the systematic measurements of emit-tance, bunch length and transmission performed along theinjection plateau for different bunch intensities. We present,as well, static and dynamic tune scans for the optimizationof the working point and measurement of the loss rate atcloseby resonances.