Introduction to ASTM C1161 Advanced ceramics are widely used in applications where high stiffness, thermal stability, wear resistance, and chemical inertness are required. Unlike metals or polymers, however, ceramics exhibit little to no plastic deformation and fail in a brittle manner. Because of this behavior, traditional tensile testing is often impractical or unreliable for ceramic materials. Instead, flexural strength testing  has become the primary method for characteri

ASTM D5458 provides guidance on test setup, equipment selection, and procedural considerations that help laboratories generate repeatable, comparable, and defensible tensile test data.