Process ceramic strength at room temperature does not fully describe high-temperature load-bearing behavior. At sufficiently elevated temperature, glassy phases, creep and long-term stress become relevant, especially for ceramic supports and refractory components.

Heating rate, binder burnout, soak time, peak temperature and cooling rate all influence ceramic microstructure and defects. Two products fired to the same maximum temperature can still differ if their complete kiln cycles are different.

Industrial ceramics can be extremely hard but still brittle because hardness and fracture toughness measure different behavior. Hardness resists scratching and indentation; fracture toughness describes resistance to crack propagation.

Flexural strength measures ceramic behavior under bending, where one surface enters tension. It can be more important than compressive strength for plates, honeycomb blocks and supported ceramic components that may span gaps or experience uneven loading.

Extrusion direction, pressing density, wall geometry and material consistency can make ceramic shrink differently in different directions. Custom tooling must compensate for real process shrinkage rather than simply scaling the final drawing by one percentage.