Abstract: The red beds are widely distributed in Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan of China and Southeast Asia. This material is not suitable as subgrade filling due to seriously weathering and its softening characteristic after absorbing water. In the project of the section between Chengdu and Ya'an of Sichuan-Tibet Railway, the graded weakly weathered red-mudstone gravel was added to red beds subgrade fillers with specific proportion to improve size distribution and compactness of the material. The stress-strain characterization of improved red beds subgrade fillings has been obtained from laboratory test. A method of randomly generating gravel geometry model with concave convex polyhedron shape has been proposed. Based on the numerical compression model established by PFC3D, the proportion of different strong force chains during loading and probability density distribution at the peak intensity have been studied. The results show that the improved red beds subgrade fillings with the stone content of 50% performs better mechanically with good deformation characteristics, and its unconfined compressive strength is 421.9 kPa. The gravels form super chains easily by friction under bond strength of red clay and that strengthens the system. The mechanical properties degree of improved red beds subgrade fillers follows the order of the stone content 50%> 40%> 60%. Therefore, it is recommended that weakly weathered red-mudstone gravel with stone content of 50% should be added to the red beds as the subgrade fillings of Sichuan-Tibet Railway.

Key words: Sichuan-Tibet Railway, red beds, soil-rock mixture, particle flow code (PFC), rock block shape