When a vehicle with rotation reenters the atmosphere in an angle of attack, it will experience an alternating heat flux on the upper surface of the thermal protection farer. Andthe position of maximum temperature on the surface is not coincident with that of maximum heat flux, which is called thermal retardation. In this paper, the thermal retardationphenomena of the thermal protection layer under an alternating heat flux are numericallysimulated. The effects of many factors, such as the time of heating, the angular velocity ofthe rotation and the properties of thermal protection material, are researched on the thermalretardation. Which is useful to the design of thermal protection layer of vehicle.