International audienceThe energy release rate of small cracks governs fatigue crack nucleation. A method is presented here to efficiently and accurately evaluate the energy release rate of such cracks, arbitrarily oriented, under general conditions of finite multiaxial loading. As a motivation, the dependence on crack length is then investigated. It is demonstrated that the energy release rate of small cracks is proportional to the crack length and that the proportionality factor is a function of the far-field parameters only. An attempt is then made to search for a general expression of this proportionality factor under simple loading conditions
