This paper presents an experimental and numerical characterization of ductile damage evolution in steels subjected to large plastic deformations. To this end, a set of tensile tests combining load-unload cycles is firstly carried out in order to evaluate the deterioration exhibited by the Young's modulus for increasing levels of plastic deformation. This task allows, in turn, to derive the characteristic parameters involved in a well-established evolution equation for the isotropic damage variable. All these material parameters are the basic data to be considered in the simulations that are performed afterwards: the analysis of the tensile test is mainly aimed at assessing the proposed characterization while the modelling of the flattening process of a cylinder is considered to discuss the possibilities and limitations of the constitutive model.