ABLATIVE PRESSURE PULSE
<div> We examine herein a simple model for the evolution in time of the pressure which a suddenly vaporized, ablating layer exerts upon the subjacent body. The model invokes a plausible construct of surface material instantaneously thrust into a gaseous regime governed by a Maxwell-Boltzmann phase space distribution. The surface pressure <i>per se</i> is gotten by computing the time rate of change of the momentum per unit area which the retrograde molecules, and only those, transfer through impact/reflection to the unvaporized body below. An explicit pressure formula, one alluding to the variable gas temperature within the vaporized layer, is obtained as a single quadrature requiring numerical integra- tion at finite times past the onset of impact. Limiting, null pressure values, both close-in and in pulse aftermath, can nevertheless be extracted in analytic terms, confirming in particular the indispensable asymptotic evanescence. A universal formula in dimensionless variables is given for pressure versus time, both suitably normalized.</div>