During torsional fatigue of externally cracked cylindrical specimen, crack face rubbing may occur. At this time, normal contact forces arise when shear displacements cause the crack faces to be wedged open due to mismatch of the fracture surface asperities. These normal forces, in turn, generate friction force which act in opposition to the applied shear stresses and reduce the effective stress intensity factor. The premise of the proposed work is that friction and wedging can be studied by measuring the shear and normal displacement across the crack mouth. We have measured the crack mouth compliance using the new biaxial extensometer.