Discrete Element Modeling of Railway Ballast for Studying Railroad Tamping Operation Ashish Jain Thesis submitted to the faculty of the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering Mehdi Ahmadian, Chair Steve C Southward Reza Mirzaeifar December 2017 Blacksburg, Virginia, USA Keywords: Discrete Element Modeling, DEM, railway ballast, track settlement, tamping, track stability, contact model, particle shape, ballast compaction, coordination number.