Fully automatic advancing front type mesh generator to take care of crack and fracture problems has been presented. It is coupled with Zienkiewicz and Zhu error estimator, the refinement methodology depends on the concept of strain energy concentration for adaptive analysis of mixed‐mode crack problems. No investigation is reported in this direction so far. It has been found that the above combination proved to be very powerful for adaptive finite element analysis of mixed‐mode crack problems in two‐dimensional isotropic solids. Very accurate stress intensity factors have been obtained for a target error of 10 per cent with a minimum number of steps. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.