Deterioration, understood as a change of mechanical properties of devices exhibiting a strong scale effect, is a phenomenon of great importance in modern industry. This effect is simultaneously an open question in theoretical mechanics, due to the fact that none of existing non-local theories (which are necessary to describe the scale effect) seem to be universal -thus constant development of new mathematical models is necessary. This paper presents the study of the above emphasised problem in the framework of fractional continuum mechanics, as an optimization (identification) task. In the identification routine, the steering parameters are: density of material, order of material, and material length scale.