  Mode II fatigue crack growth under reversed shear and static biaxial
compression was investigated in two bearing steels. Many aborted branches,
quasi-orthogonal to the main crack, were observed along the crack face. The
compressive stress parallel to the main crack hindered the growth of these
branches and favored coplanar mode II crack growth. The crack face sliding
displacement profiles measured by DIC were used to derive $\Delta_{\rm
KII,eff}$, at the main crack tip, using elastic-plastic FE simulations with
crack face friction, by an inverse method. Friction corrected crack growth
kinetics were obtained for mode II crack growth in both steels.
