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The fracture mechanics approach provides insight into the phenomenon ofstress corrosion cracking (SCC) and helps to develop guidance for avoiding or controllingSCC. Since stress corrosion cracks are brittle by their nature and often occur at stresseswell below yield, linear elastic fracture mechanics (LEFM) is normally used to study SCC.In certain cases however, the conditions are such that the LEFM approach appears notappropriate and elastic-plastic fracture mechanics (EPFM) methods are used instead.Besides the J integral approach, parameters which are linked to the crack geometry like thecrack tip opening angle (CTOA) and the crack tip opening displacement (CTOD) are used.The latter appears as a good representative of the crack tip strain rate which would beideal parameter for correlating environmental crack extension, since it controls the kineticsof the environmental cracking processes at the crack tip. The papers discusses issues of theEPFM approach to SCC.