Micro-Analysis of Railway Ballast Bond Effects

Ballast glue is a material to adjust ballast stiffness and stabilize ballast from flying due to high speed train winds; its ballast-glue system is less of microscopic mechanism research. In this paper, 3D DEM method is used to produce sleeper-ballast box model, ballast is made of real size irregular clumps, the ballast glue is represented by bonds to simulate the tensile and shear strength, it works at the ballast-ballast particles interaction contacts physically. The sleeper induced monotonic loadings results show the ballast-sleeper microscopic contact force chain distribution is altered due to ballast glue bonding effects, the glue results in tension forces among ballast system. The ballast-box bearing ability is improved with ballast global stiffness increase; ballast-box global stiffness increases with the glue bonding layer depth non-proportional, and is governed by the top 10cm layer.