Transparent experiments: releasing data from mechanical tests on three dimensional hydrogel sphere packings

We describe here experiments on the mechanics of hydrogel particle packings from the Behringer lab, performed between 2012 and 2015. These experiments quantify the evolution of all contact forces inside soft particle packings exposed to compression, shear, and the intrusion of a large intruder. The experimental set-ups and processes are presented and the data are concomitantly published in a repository (Bares et al. in Dryad, Dataset 10.5061/dryad.6djh9w0x8, 2019).