Study on the DEM Simulation of the Granular Railway Ballast Bed Tamping

Since the action of high speed train and the repeated heavy loadings, the degradation and deformation that do not restore is produced in the granular railway ballast. Tamping action is an effective method that is being used to recover the elastic of the track. In order to examine the displacement and vibration characteristics of the railway ballast particles while tamped, in this article, main work is being used to establish a coupling discrete particle flow simulation model of the railway ballast and tamping tines in EDEM with the discrete element method. The two main contents are concerned in this paper. The first is to research the modeling method of ballast particles in the software EDEM. The second is to establish a rigid-flexible coupling dynamic model of railway ballast tamping system, and according to this model, the dynamic response of the granular particles under tamping load is calculated. From a numerical simulation, we can find the effect of ballast's vibration characteristic is related to the shape of particles in significant measure. The research shows the discrete element method is an effective method for solving the vibration problem of railway ballast of random force vibration.