Since several years, cohesive zone models have been developed and used to numerically simulate the fracture of solid materials. These models are often written and identified in a mechanical framework introducing a displacement "jump" related to the virtual opening of the crack. In this work, we propose to split the overall volumic damageable plastic behaviour of the material into a purely elastoplastic behaviour related to the bulk response (hardening) and a purely damageable behaviour associated with the cohesive zone (softening). The aim of this paper is to propose an experimental approach combining Digital Image Correlation and Infrared Thermography techniques to characterize the thermo-mechanical response of the material, the bulk, and the cohesive zone.