Analysis on Railway Ballast-Glue Micro-Characteristics

Ballast-glue is a chemical material severed to adjust ballast stiffness and stabilize railway infrastructure, and its ballast-glue characteristics is less of microscopic research. The ballast-glue cubic sample compressed tests were carried, with curing time alteration, then a 3D discrete-element method (DEM) is used to investigate the glue bonding effects of the tests, where the ballast is made of real size irregular clumps, the ballast-glue is represented by bonds to simulate the tensile and shear strength, results show that ballast curing time is a key factor to govern the ballast-glue integrity and strength, ballast-glue increases the maximum compressed force up to 0.99Mpa, and the DEM bonding function is a potential tool for ballast-glue structure investigation.