The present work deals with the sintering of SiC with a low melting additive by microwave technique. The mechanical characteristics of the products were compared with that of conventionally sintered products. The failure stress of the microwave sintered products, in biaxial flexure, was superior to that of the products made by conventional sintering route in ambient condition. In firing of products by conventionally sintered process, SiC grain gets oxidized producing SiO₂ (∼ 32 wt%) and deteriorates the quality of the product substantially. Partially sintered silicon carbide by such a method is a useful material for a varieties of applications ranging from kiln furniture to membrane material.

The mechanical characterization of microwave sintered zinc oxide disks is reported. The microwave sintering was done with a specially designed applicator placed in a domestic microwave oven operating at a frequency of 2.45 GHz to a maximum power output of 800 Watt. These samples with a wide variation of density and hence, of open pore volume percentage, were characterized in terms of its elastic modulus determination by ultrasonic time of flight measurement using a 15 MHz transducer. In addition, the load dependence of the microhardness was examined for the range of loads 0.1–20 N. Finally, the fracture toughness data (𝐾_IC) was obtained using the indentation technique.

The preliminary experimental studies on the comparative behaviour of the deformation processes involved in the failure of a commercial, 0.3 mm thick, 18 mm diameter soda–lime–silica glass disks (𝐺) and multilayered glass disk–epoxy (GE) as well as glass disk–epoxy–𝐸-glass fabric (GEF) composite structures are reported. The failure tests were conducted in a biaxial flexure at room temperature. The epoxy was a commercial resin and the 𝐸-glass fabric was also commercially obtained as a two-dimensional weave of 𝐸-glass fibres to an area density of about 242 g m^–2. The multilayered structures were developed by alternate placement of the glass and reinforcing layers by a hand lay-up technique followed by lamination at an appropriate temperature and pressure. Depending on the number of layers the volume fraction of reinforcement could be varied from about 0.20 for the GE system to about 0.50 for the GEF system. It was observed that the specific failure load (load per unit thickness) was enhanced from a value of about 60 N/mm obtained for the glass to a maximum value of about 100 N/mm for the GE composites and to a maximum of about 70 N/mm for the GEF composite system. Similarly, the displacements at failure (𝛿) measured with a linear variable differential transformer (LVDT) were also found to be a strongly sensitive function of the type of reinforcement (GE or GEF) as well as the number of layers.