THE TEMPERATURE PROFILE IN WEAKLY ABSORBING MATERIALS DURING IRRADIATION

Irradiated materials that are weakly absorbing are heated by both diff usive and direct heating. This creates various internal heating patter ns and introduces the possibility of developing hot spots in the speci men that are not detected by surface monitoring. These systems are inv estigated for a single instantaneous radiation pulse and for a chain o f such pulses. Characteristic times are identified that describe vario us regimes in the temporal-spatial heating pattern in the specimen.