The well-known equations of photoelasticity of linear viscoelastic bodies are used to describe the photoelastic behavior of a viscoelastic orthotropic plate with a crack. Expressions for the stress intensity factors (SIFs) at the crack tip are obtained using photoelastic measurements. The time dependence of the SIFs is analyzed and shown to be determined by the angles between directions of the crack and tension Keywords: photoelasticity, viscoelastic orthotropic plate with a crack, tension, stress intensity, fracture Introduction. Intensive loading causes early damage of the material of structural members due to the growth of existing and the initiation of new submicro-and microdefects. In many fibrous composites, such processes mainly occur at the fiber-matrix interface. Even at normal temperature, they show viscoelastic behavior [15]. Experimental data [3,4,10,12] suggest that the fracture of such materials largely depends on their rheological properties and may occur at low stresses as a slowly growing crack. Efficient experimental nondestructive methods for the quantitative assessment of the damage of anisotropic materials under loading, especially in the plastic range, are yet to be developed.Among the direct nondestructive methods that could be used to study the kinetics of damage growth, the acoustic-emission method is the most promising [1]. A review of literature on the use of this method for the evaluation of accumulated damage shows that some well-known data are empirical, which significantly limits their use [14].The photoelastic method makes it possible to determine stresses and strains and also their distribution in anisotropic optically sensitive materials with accuracy sufficient for engineering [9,13].Solutions to nonstationary problems of fracture mechanics for anisotropic bodies with stress concentrators obtained by the dynamic photoelastic method can be found in [17-22, etc.].We will outline a technique for the determination of the stress intensity factors (SIFs) near cracks in linear viscoelastic materials based on photoelastic measurements. We will discuss results on the variation in the SIFs during precritical crack growth.1. Problem Formulation and Method of Analysis. Consider a plate made of a linear viscoelastic fibrous composite and having a central crack. The crack is parallel to the direction of preferential reinforcement of the orthotropic composite (Å Å