The main goal of the current study is to clarify the role of milling time, extra aluminum, porosity and microwave energy on ignition behavior of combustion synthesized Al2O3/TiC composite. In fact the present work deals with the microwave-combustion synthesis of Al2O3/TiC composite from Al, C and TiO2 materials using microwave heating. Taguchi robust design method of system optimization with L9 orthogonal array was used to determine the best level and the percent of contribution (%) of each factor. In order to confirm the formation of Al2O3 and TiC phases, the samples were analyzed by X-ray diffraction using Cu K radiation. The results showed that both Al2O3 and TiC are present in all samples. The crystallite sizes of produced TiC and Al2O3 are about 49–87 and 63–208nm respectively. Also the Taguchi approach proved that the milling time had the most influence on the ignition time (72.87%) and the stress stood in second place (23.55%). The power of microwave had the least influence on the ignition time. While the extra aluminum had the most influence on the combustion temperature (55.08%) and the stress stood in second place (25.92%).

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