This work deals with the identification of cohesive zone models. These models were initially proposed in the 1960s. They are now more and more frequently used in numerical simulations to account for crack initiation and propagation in different materials and structures. The identification of these models still remains a delicate issue. The recent developments in imaging techniques now allow reaching local measurement fields (e.g. strain, temperature,...). We propose here to use the large amount of information given by these techniques to set up an identification procedure accounting for either the localization development (structural effect) and also the character of the different irreversibility sources encountered (thermomechanical behavior). We study damageable elasto-plastic ductile materials. Damage is associated to a cohesive behavior of the interface between volumic elements supposed to remain purely elasto-plastic. The identification procedure involves two steps. The first one consists in characterizing the shape and the parameters of the cohesive zone on tensile tests by analyzing the mechanical fields locally developed. The second one consists in checking the thermo-mechanical consistency of the identified model by confronting the calorimetric measurements deduced from temperature fields with the previsions of the identified model. This method is applied on different materials (Dual Phase steel and copper). A specific caution is conferred to the characterization of the characteristic length necessarily introduced by the identification. It is shown that this length can be estimated regarding the different parameters introduced in the image processing.
