“…Methods can be basically divided into substitution methods [crack opening displacement method (Aliabadi and Rooke, 1991), extrapolation methods based on stress field (Parteymüller, 1999) or displacement field around the crack tip (Owen and Faweks, 1983), one-point or twopoint displacement method (Lim et al, 1992)] and energy methods [virtual crack closure method (Buchholz et al, 1987), virtual crack extension method (Hellen and Blackburn, 1975), J-integral (Aliabadi and Rooke, 1991), etc.]. Due to their robustness and accuracy the displacement methods are most often used to determine the fracture parameters for the problems of cracks propagation simulation under contact conditions (Chue and Chung, 2000;Ko et al, 2001;Ren et al, 2002;Ringsberg and Bergkvist, 2003). The quarter point displacement (QPD) method was used in this paper, where the stress intensity factors are determined from displacements on opposite crack surfaces by the following relationships (Lim et al, 1992): …”