1. Introduction Zirconia ceramic is one of the most important structural ceram ics due to its high fracture toughness, resulting from the transformation [1,2]. However, the excellent properties only occur at ambient temperature and exhibit serious degradation with increasing temperature 13l, which restricts the high-temperature applications of the material. One way to improve the mechan- ical properties of ceramic materials is to reinforce them with stronger whiskers [4l. For example, silicon carbide whiskers have been widely used to reinforce ceramics and achieved much better properties 15l. However, Sic whisker is rigid and has no volume shrinkage during the sintering. It is well-known that the shrinkage of the Zro2 matrix around the Sic whisker (Sicw) leads to ten- sile hoop stresses and radial compressive stresses, which inhibit the densification of the composites [6,7]. Therefore, preparing whisker reinforced ceramic composites is not an easy job. Pre- viously, Sicw/zro2 composites were prepared by hot-pressing at temperature of 1600 cc and pressure of 25 MPa [8,9]