A direct measurement of the crack-driving stress has been attempted by applying a nanoindentation-combined, stress-probing technique to the expected crack routes ahead of a Vickers impression. The nanoindentation curves close to the remnant indent were compared to those of an unstressed bare sample and were interpreted into quantitative stress values. In detail, from the difference of two stress distributions measured from uncracked and cracked indentation corners, the driving stress for the radial cracking was estimated; a rapid decaying response with a distance to the Vickers indent center with the peak value 406.7MPa. The fracture toughness of soda-lime glass, estimated by taking into account the results measured in this study was 0.74 ± 0.15 2 / 1 m MPa × and was comparable with that of the literature.
