Although the convective cooling of simple materials undergoing laser irradiation has been well documented, the effects of radiative cooling for composite materials undergoing laser heating are not as well documented and are of increasing importance to the manufacturing and aerospace industries. The temperature distributions within onedimensional homogeneous and two-dimensional orthotropic radiating plates subjected to a spatially decaying laser source are presented. The incident energy at the exposed external surface is partially absorbed and transferred through the plate by conduction. The temperature results are presented as a function of a wide variety of thermal and geometric dimensionless parameters. The effects of surface radiation and material conductivity are examined in detail. Results from this study are compared to data in the open literature to gain a better understanding of the effects that the fourth power law for radiation, local temperature gradient in conduction, and first power of the temperature difference in convection have on the resultant temperature profiles. Nomenclature A i = area of node i Bi = Biot number, h=k C i = nodal capacitance, J=K C p = specific heat, J=kg K d = laser beam diameter, m F ij = view factor between nodes i and j G ij = linear or radiation conductance, W=K _ g = Gaussian spatial profile of the laser _ g 000 = energy generation rate per unit volume, W=m 3 h = convective heat transfer coefficient, W=m 2 K I o = laser peak power density, W=m 2 k = thermal conductivity, W=m K L = thickness of the plate, m n = total number of nodes of the thermal math model Q i = heat source, W R = surface reflectance T = present temperature, K T c = external environment temperature for convective exchange, K T o = initial temperature, K T r = external environment temperature for radiative exchange, K T 0 = unknown temperature, K T 00 = past temperature, K T = dimensionless temperature, T T o =I o 1 R=k t = time, s W = half-width of the plate, m x = x coordinate, m y = y coordinate, m y = depth, y = thermal diffusivity, m 2 =s = laser-pulse fall-time parameter, 1=s " = emissivity = laser-pulse rise-time parameter, 1=s = absorption coefficient, 1=m = density, kg=m 3 = Stefan-Boltzmann constant, 5:67 10 8 W=m 2 K 4 = dimensionless time, t 2 Subscripts e = external i = current node j = adjacent node o = initial x = x direction y = y direction 1 = surface 1 2 = surface 2