Abstract: In recent years, numerical simulation technology has become an important method to study the powder compaction process, and it is used more and more in powder compaction. Many scholars used the discrete element method (DEM) to study the mechanical behavior of powder particles from a mesoscopic perspective, to analyze the characteristics of the force chain and the evolution process of the force chain, and revealed the influence of the mesoscopic structure on the macroscopic properties. The compression deformation mechanisms of different powders were studied by using multi-particle finite element method (MPFEM) at the particle level. In this paper, the application research and development of DEM and MPFEM numerical methods in powder compaction are reviewed, and the difficulties of MPFEM in powder compaction are summarized. The evolution law of the powder force chain and the particle densification mechanism under the changing dynamic load is a direction of future research.