ABLAT, Ablation Modeling Extension to ESATAN

This paper discusses the capabilities of the ABLAT software which has been developed by ERC and Dornier for the European Space Agency. The software provides an ablation modelling capability for the ESATAN thermal analyser and consists of two sections:

1. i.
   A stand-alone preprocessor allowing specification of the ablation model. This has both an X11/OSF Motif and a command line interface.
2. ii.
   An integrated solver capability within the ESATAN system, allowing transient analysis of an ablating surface in conjunction with a standard thermal model.

After a brief overview of the major aims of the development, the software is discussed from two main points of view, the user interface facilities (how the user defines the model to the system), and the calculation facilities (what can be calculated, and how are these calculations performed).