In this contribution, the softening process of a packed bed of pre-reduced pellets is investigated numerically and experimentally. For this purpose, pellets were reduced to different reduction degrees in a reduction apparatus. The range of reduction degree (RD) was selected 50 - 80%, which is an acceptable range for iron-bearing materials reaching the cohesive zone. Then, softening experiments under load for a packed bed of pre-reduced pellets in a lab-scale furnace at a temperature range of 800 degrees C to initial melt formation point were carried out. For the modeling part, the newly developed eXtended Discrete Element Method (XDEM) is used. This method is able to predict the deformation of particles over temperature which needs an extension to include heat transfer to DEM. Heat transfer between particle-particle, particle-wall, and particle-gas is considered. To validate the XDEM results with the measurements, an appropriate relationship between Young's modulus of the pellet versus temperature has been estimated. The effect of load on the bed shrinkage is also discussed. FactSage version 7.0 software was used to compute the initial melt point with the phase equilibrium for a 5 -component FeO - SiO2 - CaO - MgO - Al2O3 system. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.