Observation and analysis were made on the effect of thermally induced residual stress on propagation and opening behavior of fatigue cracks in multilayered composite plates which were composed of low carbon steel and ferritic or austenitic stainless steel. It was observed that the crack propagation behavior in the composite plates was quite different from that in the monolithic plates, when the crack growth rates were plotted against kmax·But, when those were plotted against ΔKeff, the data points of the composite plates came close to those of the monolithic plates, although there were some scatters. This suggested that the residual stress had a large influence on the crack opening behavior in the composite plates. Therefore, by calculating the actual stress intensity factor K'max for the composite plates based on an initial distribution of residual stresses, their crack opening behavior was estimated by using k'max and the crack opening behavior of monolithic plates. The estimated trends showed a fairly good agreement with those of the observed results.