Abstract: Ablation behaviors of 2D braided carbon fiber/epoxy composite irradiated by fiber laser were investigated. Ablation characteristics of braided composites under different thermal flux conditions were obtained and the laser ablation mechanism was analyzed. Combined with non-contact temperature measurement and contact temperature measurement, the transient temperature field evolution of the surface of the composite was measured by the high temperature infrared camera, while the temperature history of back surface was obtained by thermocouple. The experiment results show that when the level of incident laser power density is 10² W·cm^-2, the epoxy resin of the 2D braided composites has obvious mass transfer, but the morphology of the carbon fiber is not changed. Meanwhile under high-energy laser irradiation, the temperature difference between the front and back surface of 2D braided carbon fiber/epoxy composites is very large. The maximum temperature of the front surface is close to 2 000℃, and the maximum temperature of the back surface is between 200-500℃.