Welding process is a source of very high magnitude residual stresses in the components, which affect the performance of the welded joints in service especially in fracture and crack growth. Therefore it is essential to understand how the stress-field ahead of the crack-tip varies with the application of load in the presence of residual stresses. The experiment aims at measuring the strength of the crack tip stress/strain field under in-situ fracture in the presence of residual stresses. In general, residual stresses increase the crack-tip constraint. However with the crack length increasing, some of the residual stresses are relaxed thereby modifying the crack-tip constraint and the stress-state ahead. In order to study the interaction of residual/applied stresses, it is required to determine this variation of the stress-state ahead of the crack-tip under crack extension. Further, this information is vital for validating the simulation models of defect behaviour under fracture in the presence of highly localised residual stresses in a welded component.