Effect of scaling of ballast particles on their morphological

characteristics
Rahul Raj, Aval Singhal, Maneesh Kumar & Sowmiya Chawla
Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of
Mines), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India

ABSTRACT
An image analyser (IMAGE J) has been successfully employed for a comparative study of morphological
characteristics of actual and reduced scale ballast particles. In this paper, a detailed procedure has been outlined.
Results of analysis of actual and reduced scale ballast particles have been shown graphically using plots between
different morphological characteristics (sphericity, aspect ratio, elongation, form factor, flatness) versus Roundness
and a Zingg diagram (plot between elongation and flatness). Using these graphs, comparative results were tabulated
for actual and reduced scale ballast.

1 INTRODUCTION the ballast for reference to various engineering

In a country as vast as India, railways form the basis
of mass transportation. It is the most widely used form
of transport in terms of both the number of people
availing its services and the volume of goods that is
transported across the country. It presents a cheap,
economic, efficient and accessible mode of transport.
India has a network of142141 km of running track
length over a route length of 92735 km spread
throughout the length and breadth of the county
(Ministry of Railways 2018).
A typical railway line has three major components –
a railway track, a ballast layer, and a layer of sub-
ballast and subgrade, as shown in Fig. 1. The railway
track is the metal rail on which the train travels. The rail
is in turn rests on concrete sleepers, which transfer the
load from the rail to the ballast. The ballast layer is the
layer of crushed aggregate which bears the load, as
well as serve as a porous medium to allow drainage of
rainwater. The ballast also has a cushioning effect for
the train, allowing a smoother ride. The sub-ballast and
subgrade form the final interface between ballast and
the ground, allowing for an efficient load distribution and
transfer.
Evidently, ballast serves as a very important
Figure 1. Components of Railway Track
problems. The major testes conducted are the Los
Angles Abrasion test and Permeability testsamong
others.
As per Indian Railway Standards, ballast particles
should be crushed stone aggregates which are angular
in shape and the sample (full scale) should meet the
size and gradation laid out by Indian Railways:
a) Retained on 65 mm sq.mesh sieve - 5% Max.
b) Retained on 40 mm sq.mesh sieve - 40-60%
c) Retained on 20 mm sq.mesh sieve - >98%
as per IRS - GE - 1 (2004).
It is evident that for the given size range, the size of
apparatus required may not be economic or even
practical for the laboratory to purchase, operate and
maintain. Moreover, the amount of ballast that may be
involved in the testing process can become quite heavy
and voluminous, make the tests even more
cumbersome in terms of procuring, transporting, and
using the prepared sample. This is specially observed
in case of permeability tests, wherein the apparatus
required for the test may reach a few meters in height,
and in cases where the tests require a testing rig that
represents a section of the railway track.
A possible way to circumvent this issue is to use
ballast particles that have been crushed further to a
smaller scale. These reduced scale particles fall
between a size range that is a fraction of the actual
scale in terms of both the upper limit and lower limit of
the size.
However, it must first be determined whether the
reduced scale particles are actually a scaled down
representative of the actual ballast. One might argue
that since the reduced ballast in itself is crushed stone
similar to the ballast sample used in railway lines.
However, it must be noted that the reduced size ballast
particles are not an exact scaled down replica of the

component of the rail track. Thus, a lot of research is actual ballast. Over a large number of particles, it is of
focused on determining the behavior and properties of course possible to find a reduced scale sample that is

1
an exact scaled version of the actual ballast particle.
But if an identical trend can be 0established for random
samples of actual and reduced scale ballast, it can be
conclusively stated that a given sample of reduced
scale ballast has same morphological characteristics as
a given sample of full scale ballast. The permeability
function of ballast is dependent on the shape and
packing of the ballast. However, the packing itself is
dependent on the shape of the particles and extent of
tamping and settlement. Furthermore, it must be noted
that the entire set of particles must satisfy the
requirement, since ballast behaves as a combined bulk.
Image based analysis is one of the most convenient
method of determining the morphological characteristics
of individual particles and develop trends based on the
results of the analysis. Such software can determine the
outline of the particle based on the difference between
the pixel color of the particle and the background. The
inbuilt library allows the software to determine the
various morphological parameters based on the outline.
The software used for this research is ImageJ 1.46r,
which is an open-sourcesoftware developed forNational
Institute of Mental Health, Bethesda, Maryland, USA.
Various researchers have worked in the field of
image analysis of ballast particles using propriety
software developed by them, such as the University of
Illinois Aggregate Image Analyser (Moaveni, et al.
2013), theOmniconAlpha Image analyser(Yudhbir and
Rahim 1991)or using 3D laser scanning (Guo, et al.
2018)to determine the various indices. However, the
method used for this research is fast, cheap, easy and
does not require expensive equipment. Thus, it can be
conducted in any lab with minimal equipment and with a
reasonable degree of accuracy.
100
80
Percentage Finer Than
60
40
Full Scale
Reduced Scale
20
0 process, save and print 8–bit, 16–bit and 32–bit images.
1 10 100
Seive Size
Figure 2. Gradation Curve of Ballast Sample
1.1 Ballast
Ballast particles are obtained by crushing the
quartzite stones extracted from the quarry. The ballast
used for the analysis is a sample of crushed, angular
quartzite picked off the freshly laid ballast at Parasnath
Junction, Jharkhand, India. The sample is has not been
fouled or subjected to loading. The gradation curve of
the used sample (full scale and 1:4 reduced scale) is
shown in figure 2, which has been generated as
described by Mora et al. (1998), that is, by using the
intermediate dimension of the enclosing ellipsoid as a
measure of the sieve size. The intermediate dimension
is explained in a later section.
Figure 3. Enveloping Ellipse
The total amount of ballast particles picked off from
the site, one hundred particles were selected at random
for the purpose of analysis. After analysis, data from
some of the particles was rejected, based on the criteria
as mentioned in the procedure section.
Sample selection was done in a random fashion to
ensure that the trends and relations obtained could be
generalized to be applicable to any set of particles that
may be analyzed in the future.
1.2 1:4 Reduced Scale Ballast
Henceforth mentioned in the paper, reduced ballast
will stand for 1:4 scale reduced ballast unless
mentioned otherwise. Reduced scale ballast is obtained
by further crushing the actual ballast such that for the
particles now the upper and lower bounds of the size
range of the particles is one-fourth of the range as
stipulated by Indian Railways for actual ballast.
Thus, the reduced size ballast consists of crushed,
angular particles, supplied by a contractor employed by
the Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Technology (Indian School of Mines), Dhanbad. Of the
total sample, 100 particles were selected at random,
and analyzed. As in case of actual ballast, some of the
data was later rejected, which is explained in the
procedure section.
1.3 ImageJ
ImageJ is a public domain Java image processing
and analysis program. It can display, edit, analyze,
It can read many image formats including TIFF, GIF,
JPEG, BMP, DICOM, FITS and RAW. It can calculate
area and pixel value statistics of user-defined
selections. It can measure distances and angles. It can
perform geometric transformations such as scaling,
rotation and flips.Thus, ImageJ serves as a handy tool
to conduct image analysis. The software is easy to use
and support multiple functionsrelating to image
processing.
The version used for this research is IJ 1.46r (2012).
The software is opensource, and freely available at
https://imagej.nih.gov
1.4 Morphological Characteristics
2
 It defines the shape characteristics of a particle.
The morphology of Ballast is given in terms of
Roundness Index R, Sphericity 𝜓 ,Form Factor FF,
Aspect Ratio AR, Flatness F, and Elongation E.
 Roundness: The roundness of a particle is a
measure of the curvature of the corners and
edges expressed as a ratio to the average
curvature of particle as a whole, independent
of its form (Krumbein 1941). It is directly
obtained from the software as a result of the
analysis.
 Sphericity: Cube root of ratio of volume of
particle to its circumscribing sphere (Krumbein
1941)
3
𝜓 = √((𝑑𝑠 ∗ 𝑑𝐼 )⁄𝑑𝐿2 )
[1]
 Aspect Ratio: The aspect ratio of larger axes
the particle’s fitted ellipse
AR = 𝑑𝐿 /𝑑𝐼 [2]
 Form Factor: Comparison of the perimeter of
an equivalent circle to the perimeter of the
particle. (al. M. e., 2001)
FF = (4 ∗ 𝜋 ∗ 𝐴)/𝑃 2
[3]
 Elongation: the elongation ratio is the ratio of
intermediate length divided by the greatest
length. (al. B. e., 1991)
E = 𝑑𝐼 /𝑑𝐿
[4]
 Flatness: The flatness ratio is the ratio of the
shortest length divided by the intermediate
length. (al. B. e., 1991)
F = 𝑑𝑆 /𝑑𝐼 [5]
where,
𝑑𝐿 , 𝑑𝐼 , 𝑑𝑆 = longest, Intermediate and shortest
dimensions respectively,
P= perimeter,
A=area
Figure 4. Procedure followed for analysis
1
0.8
0.6
Elongation
Full
0.4
Reduced
0.2
0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Flatness
2 PROCEDURE
The images are imported to the IMAGE-J software,
which is capable of distinguishing particle boundaries
based on the pixel level analysis of color. The steps
followed are described below.
First, a workbench was assembled in the shape of
an ‘L’ to serve as a white background. For this, white
paper was used. Following this, a 5 cm line was
Figure 5. Zingg Diagram for Full Scale and Reduced
Scale Sample
sketched on both the limbs to serve as a scale. ImageJ
analyses images in terms of pixels. However, it allows
the user to define a scaling factor, based on which the
software automatically converts all pixel-based
measurements to regular measurements. An advantage
of this is that it is not necessary to have the camera at a
fixed distance from the particle, as long as the image is
clear.
Following this, the particle is placed on the
workbench and a photo of clicked from the top side and
from the front side. While placing the particle it was
ensured that the longest dimension, the dimensions
being indicated in figure 3, is visible in both the top and
front view, i.e., it is along the edge of the workbench.
Furthermore, the particle must be placed close to the
scaling markings so that the referencing is accurate. At
the same time, the markings should be clearly visible
for analysis during the analysis. Top and front images of
100 actual ballast particles and 100 reduced scale
ballast particles were clicked.
The images were then opened in ImageJ for
analysis. First, the image was cropped to remove
unnecessary part of the background. Then, the scale of
analysis was set using the marking made on the bench.
It must be noted that cropping changes the pixel density
of the image, and thus, scaling should be done only
after cropping. Furthermore, once the scale is set, no
further cropping should be done.
Once the scale is set, the image is converted from
acoloured image to an 8-bit greyscale image, since
ImageJ processes the images by differentiating
between the foreground and background based on the
difference of the shade of grey. Following this, the
image is cleaned to remove the scaling marks – so that
the software does not mistake them to be other
particles in the image. Other background noises, such
3
 3
1.0

2.5
0.8 Full Scale

Reduced Scale
2

Aspect Ratio
0.6
Sphericity

1.5

0.4
Full Scale 1

0.2 Reduced Scale

0.5

0.0 0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Roundness Roundness

Figure 6. Roundness vs. Sphericity Figure 8. Roundness vs Aspect Ratio

as marks left on the background by dust and scratches,
can be removed in a similar manner.
Next, the image was thresholded – which is the
cleaving the particle boundary to obtain a pure black
(background) and pure white (particle image) regions.
Thresholding is a partly manual process, since the user
has to decide upon a specific degree of accuracy while
deciding on the particle boundary around which
cleaving is to be done. Although in most cased the
software can determine a clear boundary between
foreground and background, this is however dependent
on the clarity of the image and on the presence of
noises such as scratches, markings and shadows.
Hence, thresholding may sometimes result in slight
errors and overestimation or underestimation of the
measurement.
Finally, the particle is analysed and the internal
mechanism of the software presents the desired results,
by determining a best fit ellipse around the boundary
and noting the measurements for the same. Various
morphological characteristics (such as Sphericity, Form
Factor, Aspect Ratio, Elongation, Flatness, etc.) are
calculated. The results are stored in an Excel
spreadsheet, and it is ensured that the top view data
1 shadows to a minimum, but complete elimination is not
0.8
0.6
Elongation
and the front view data are logged together. Following
this, the screening of data is done. As mentioned
earlier, for a given set of data for a particle, the length of
major axis from top view image and front view mage
must be identical. This stems form the fact that the top
and side view, both have the major axis in common as
shown in figure 3.
Based on this, the sets of data wherein the lengths
of major axes from top and front view images exceeded
20% of the larger values were discarded. A margin of
20% was kept owing to errors induced in the process.
The first source of error was human error which
occurred since it is not possible to have photos clicked
at exactly 90 degrees, with the major axis completely in
view in both the views. The particles were placed on the
bench by intuition - the longest side was determined by
visual observation and placed accordingly. However, it
can not always be accurately predicted by visual
observation which positioning will yield the longest
dimension in the top and front view simultaneously. The
second source of error was the limitation of the
software, since it can not always trace the exact
boundary between the ballast and the background. The
presence of shadows also interferes with the
capabilities of the software. It was tried to keep the
possible. Hence, a margin of 20% was chosen to allow
enough number of particles to pass the filter for analysis
without having too many erroneous data sets.
To prove the two sets of data to be concurrent all
major properties must be shown to be concurrent to

each other. However, this is a cumbersome process.

Instead, the properties can be shown to be related to a
Full Scale
certain, characteristic property of the set, and then
0.4 Reduced Scale those two properties can be shown to be concurrent.
This will result in all properties being shown to be
concurrent, although in an indirect fashion.
0.2 Care was taken that while assembling the data in a
spreadsheet, the data from the top-view image and the
data from the side-view image were placed at
0 corresponding places.An important thing to note is that
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
while fitting the ellipse to the top-view outline and to the
Roundness front-view outline, the length of major axis, in an ideal
Figure 7. Roundness vs. Elongation case, must be the same.

4
 For this process, roundness was chosen to be the Particle Breakage Index (PBI) , Bg (%)
independent property that will link the results from the 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18
two data sets. Roundness is the measure of how
closely the shape of an object approaches that of a
40
mathematical perfect circle. Thus, it is a property that
45

Peak friction angle, ϕp' (deg)

depends on the shape of the particle, and not its size.
Hence, it is an ideal property to relate the full scale set
to the reduced scale one.Studies have shown that
rounded river gravel is twice as susceptible to rutting as
compared to crush stone (Barksdale and Itani 1989),
which further emphasises the importance of roundness
as an index property.
3 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The particles were analyzed and the
interpretations were drawn from the data.
3.1 Zingg Diagram
Zingg diagrams are plots between flatness and
elongation of particlesas shown in figure 4. It serves to
classify the shape of the particle and gives an idea of
the distribution of particles among the various shape
categories – namely bladed, oblate, equant or prolate.
As can be observed from figure 4, the particle
distribution is random. Most of the particles selected in
actual ballast fall in the prolate category, whereas the
reduced sized particles mostly consisted of equant type
particle. There is a very heavy bias towards prolate
particles in actual sample. This can be attributed to the
1 Another important point to note is that top view
0.8
Form Factor
50
55
60
65 Ballast-I, d50 = 12.5 mm, Dr = 87% (1:3 scale)(Sowmiya 2013)
Ballast-I, d50 = 12.5 mm, Dr = 50% (1:3 scale)(Sowmiya 2013)
70 Ballast-II, d50 = 43 mm (full-scale)(Sharma 2007)
various Ballast-III, d50 = 50 mm (full-scale) (Sharma 2007)
75 Bombo latite, Gradation A (Indraratna et al. 1998)
Bombo latite, Gradation B (Indraratna et al. 1998)
80
Figure 10, Peak friction angle v/s Particle Breakage
Index
the ideal property to analyse the trends presented by
the ballast particles.
The main aim is to find the behaviour of
morphological properties of a set of particles when a
principle property is varied. Should the trends observed
be similar in case of reduced and full-scale ballast, it
can be stated that for a given range of value of the
principle property, the other morphological properties
shall vary in the given manner. Thus, the behaviour of
the two sets can be stated as identical.
roundness and front view roundness in themselves are
2D parameters and depend upon the orientation of the
particle while clicking the photo. Hence, a new
parameter is proposed, wherein the product of the two
roundness is taken. The two roundness values are
mutually independent, and thus, taking their product

0.6
seems a logical way to eliminate the orientation factor.
Full Scale However, as a general convention, it was ensured that
the particle was placed on their flattest side. Same step
0.4 Reduced Scale was taken for the form factor of the particle.

Table 1 Values of Roundness, Flatness and Form

0.2 Factor

Property Min. Max. Average

0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 Roundness: Full Scale 0.139 0.632 0.349
Roundness Roundness: Reduced Scale 0.137 0.794 0.446
Figure 9. Roundness vs Form Factor Flatness: Full Scale 0.490 0.998 0.833

crushing process or the geology of the rock. This would Flatness: Reduced Scale 0.555 0.997 0.833
require further investigation to determine if this bias can Form Factor: Full Scale 0.004 0.144 0.060
be a source of deviation in trends presented in this
paper. Furthermore, it must be noted that both the Form Factor: Reduced Scale 0.056 0.656 0.357
sample lacked a significant number of oblate or bladed The various plots generated are presented in figure
particle. 5-8.
Clearly, there is a well-defined trend for roundness
3.2 Roundness Plots and sphericity, roundness and aspect ratio, and
roundness and elongation. No discernable trend was
It has been stated by Wadell (1932) that roundness, noted for roundness and aspect ratio, and roundness
by definition, is a property independent of the size of the and form factor. Hence, it may be stated with
particle. It is a measure of the jaggedness of the confidence that for a given range of roundness
periphery of the particle. Hence, roundness serves as values,the values of sphericity, aspect ratio and

5
elongation will be similar for both full scale and reduced
scale ballast. In the case of form factor and flatness, it
seems like these properties are independent of
roundness. Hence, for them, a comparison of range of
values and average was made, which is present in the
Table 1.
4 CONCLUSION
Thus, it may be concluded that observable trends
are present between roundness and variousother
morphological characteristics. Furthermore, the trends
observed are identical in case of full scale and reduced
scale ballast. Thus, it may be stated that for roundness
and the related properties, the behaviour of actual scale
and reduced scale ballast particles are identical in
terms of those properties. The range of variation of
roundness for the particles is considerable and thus, the
trend is valid over the entire range of variation.
In the case of flatness and form factor, no
observable trend was observed with respect to
roundness. While comparing flatness values, the range
of values and average value of flatness are almost
identical. This can be further investigated to determine if
this can be generalised for actual and reduced scale
particles. In case of form factor, the data sets seem to
be completely discordant. Hence, for areas where form
factor is not an important parameter, it can be said with
confidence that the behaviour of reduced scale ballast
is same as that of actual ballast.
This, coupled with the results of study conducted by
Chawla (2013), wherein it was shown that the material
properties of actual and reduced scale ballast are same
i.e. plot of friction angle v/s particles breakage index is
similar for full and reduced size ballast as shown in
figure 10. The plot is a result of the study conducted for
particle breakage at different values of confining
pressure. Earlier researchers such as Indraratna (1998)
and Sharma (2007), had developed the particle
breakage trends for actual ballast, whereas Chawla
(2013) conducted the same study for 1:3 reduced scale
ballast. The trends obtained from the two studies are
similar and thus, the mechanical properties of actual
and reduced scale ballast were related.
It can be stated that reduced scale ballast can be an
exact replica of full scale ballast. This will be an
important step in the approval of tests done on reduced
scale particles.
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