Dielectric elastomers are a class of solid polymeric materials that are sufficiently soft to deform under the application of an electric field due to the interaction of quasi-static electric charges. Their potential to undergo large deformations renders them promising candidates for the design of energy harvesters, sensors and soft actuators. For their application however, the influence of additional thermal effects should be taken into account as the base materials frequently show a distinct thermal sensitivity that drastically influences their mechanical response. This contribution presents the results of a wide range of experiments conducted on the popular dielectric elastomer VHB 4905™  under a combination of mechanical, thermal and electric loading scenarios. These experiments are performed in such a way that the obtained results are well suited for the identification of the necessary material parameters appearing in a thermo–electro–viscoelastic constitutive model that will subsequently be presented in the second part of the contribution.

介电弹性体是一类固体聚合物材料，由于准静电荷的相互作用，在施加电场的情况下足够柔软以变形。它们经历大变形的潜力使它们成为设计能量收集器、传感器和软执行器的有希望的候选者。然而，对于它们的应用，应考虑额外热效应的影响，因为基础材料经常表现出明显的热敏感性，这会极大地影响其机械响应。此贡献展示了在流行的介电弹性体 VHB 4905™ 上进行的各种实验的结果  在机械、热和电负载情况的组合下。这些实验是以这样一种方式进行的，即所获得的结果非常适合识别出现在热-电-粘弹性本构模型中的必要材料参数，该模型随后将在贡献的第二部分中介绍。