AbstractThis paper deals with the direct identification of parameters governing anisotropic elastic constitutive equations. These parameters are identified from heterogeneous strain fields with the virtual fields method. This method is based on a relevant use of the principle of virtual work. Different numerical aspects of the implementation of the method are discussed in the paper, mainly in terms of stability of the identified parameters when noisy data are processed. It is shown that the sensitivity of the method to noisy data is compatible with a practical use during experiments. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.