The problem of the steady propagation of detonation waves with friction losses is revisited including detailed kinetics. The derived formulation is used to study the influence of chemical modeling on the steady solutions and reaction zone structures obtained for stoichiometric hydrogen-oxygen. Detonation velocity-friction coefficient (D − c f) curves, pressure, temperature, Mach number, thermicity and species profiles are used for that purpose. Results show that both simplified kinetic schemes considered (i.e., one-step and three-step chainbranching), fitted using standard methodologies, failed to quantitatively capture the critical c f values obtained with detailed kinetics; moreover one-step Arrhenius chemistry also exhibits qualitative differences for D/D CJ ≤ 0.55 due to an overestimation of the chemical time in this regime. An alternative fitting methodology for simplified kinetics is proposed using detailed chemistry D − c f curves as a target rather than constant volume delay times and ideal Zel'dovich-von Neumann-Döring profiles; this method is in principle more representative to study non-ideal detonation propagation. The sensitivity of the predicted critical c f value, c f,crit , to the detailed mechanisms routinely used to model hydrogen oxidation was also assessed; significant differences were found, mainly driven by the consumption/creation rate of the HO 2 radical pool at low postshock temperature.