A detailed analysis has been shown to illustrate the influence of various shapes of annular metallic Support on microwave heating of 2D cylinders for beef samples. The beef samples are chosen to represent typical food materials with high dielectric loss. A preliminary analysis on microwave heating of samples has been shown via average power within a sample vs cylinder radius diagram in the absence of support and three regimes have been identified such that regime I (R = 0.50cm) and III (R = 2 cm) denote the local minima in average power and regime II (R = 0.67 cm) corresponds to a maxima in average power, In addition, regime I corresponds to a spatial maxima in power at the unexposed face, regime II corresponds to maxima in power at both the exposed and unexposed faces and regime III has two maxima at the exposed face and the center of the sample. The influence of support has been illustrated with average power distribution vs aspect ratio (phi) diagram. Three types of cross sections of annular Supports such as circular (type I), horizontal square (type II) and inclined square (type III) are considered. It has been observed that the average power is enhanced due to the metallic support for phi <= 0.3. Type I support would correspond larger power distributions and heating rates, for regimes I and II whereas for regime III, the square shaped supports correspond to greater heating rates at larger aspect ratios. The location of spatial maxima in power or heating rate is found to be shifted due to metallic support with high aspect ratios. The shape of the support plays important role on localized heating for the samples corresponding to regime Ill. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.