In this paper, the plane stress fracture toughness of cold rolled 4.5mm thick SS41 steel plate was investigated for various crack ratios respectively in case of base metal, normalized and annealed heat-treated specimens using the method of J-integral. The specimen geometry used was double edge tension (DET) specimen. The experiments were performed on an Instron machine and all the crack lengths were measured by travelling microscope. The plane stress fracture toughness obtained by the method of Rice equation was J sub(1C)=22.8kgf/mm for the base metal, j sub(1C)-24.7kgf/mm for the normalized specimen and J sub(1C)=26.9 kgf/mm for the annealed. The J-integral computed at the limit load was found unsuitable for fracture toughness determination, because of large variation depending on the crack ratio.