Book excerpt: Created in 1975, LMT-Cachan is a joint laboratory École Normale Superieure de Cachan, Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris 6) University and the French Research Council CNRS (Department of Engineering Sciences).The Year 2000 marked the 25th anniversary of LMT. On this occasion, a series of lectures was organized in Cachan in September-October, 2000. This publication contains peer-reviewed proceedings of these lectures and is aimed to present engineers and scientists with an overview of the latest developments in the field of damage mechanics. The formulation of damage models and their identification procedures were discussed for a variety of materials.