The grain gradation will change the shear strength of the gravel material,which will affect the bearing capacity of the ballasted track roadbed.In this paper,large-scale direct shear tests are carried out for different initial particle sizes of crushed stone materials.The test results show that the internal friction Angle of crushed stone materials decreases gradually with the increase of fine particle content.In addition,the shear strength of crushed stone material is nonlinear,and its internal friction Angle decreases with the increase of normal stress.On this basis,a new nonlinear strength criterion is proposed to describe the shear strength of crushed stone materials,and good fitting results are obtained.The strength criterion has a wide application prospect in practical engineering.