Abstract In this note we analyze the influence of four damage models on the collapse load of a structure. The models considered here have been developed using the hypothesis based on the concept of effective stress and the principle of strain equivalence and they were proposed by Lemaitre and Chaboche (1990, Mechanics of Solid Materials), Wang (1992, “Unified CDM Model and Local Criterion for Ductile Fracture—I. Unified CDM Model for Ductile Fracture,” Eng. Fract. Mech., 42, pp. 177–183), Chandrakanth and Pandey (1995, “An Isotropic Damage Model for Ductile Material,” Eng. Fract. Mech., 50, pp. 457–465), and Bonora (1997, “A Nonlinear CDM Model for Ductile Failure,” Eng. Fract. Mech., 58, pp. 11–28). The differences between them consist mainly in the form of the dissipative potential from which the kinetic law of damage is derived and also in the assumptions made about some parameters of the material.