Abstract: The use of explosives is tightly regulated, limiting the research on the failure mechanism of brittle materials such as rocks under dynamic explosive loads. In order to establish a safe and effective experimental method to simulate the dynamic load of explosive explosion, and to carry out further research on the failure mechanism of brittle materials such as rocks under the explosion load, an experimental method of breaking rock and brittle materials by using wire electrical explosion to simulate explosive explosion is proposed. Experiments of metal wire electrical explosion simulating spherical charge and cylindrical charge breaking cement mortar specimens are designed and carried out. A description of the model and experimental procedures is presented. A high speed camera is used to photograph the formation and propagation of cracks on the surface of the specimen, and a Rogowski coil is used to measure the electrical explosion current of the wire. The influence of charging voltage on the failure process of cement mortar specimens is investigated. The similarities and differences between electrical explosion load and explosive explosion load are analyzed, and the advantages of wire electrical explosion experimental method are also discussed. The results show that with the charge voltage increases, the peak current of the wire explosion increases, but the rising edge time of current remains the same. The wire electrical explosion can effectively break cement mortar specimens, and is an effective method to simulate the explosive explosion to break rock like brittle materials with the advantages of safety, non pollution, energy control, and repeatability. Meanwhile, the experimental results of simulating spherical charge and cylindrical charge show that compared with explosive explosion, the wire electrical explosion is dominated by shock wave, and the effect of blasting gas is negligible. At a voltage of 50 kV (energy 5.0 kJ), the peak electrical explosion pressure of a linear copper wire of 0.4 mm diameter and 100 mm length is 49.05 GPa. The metal wire has the characteristics of slender. By changing electrode diameter and length diameter ratio of wire, the miniaturized spherical charge and cylindrical charge blasting model experiments with high geometric similarity to in situ blasting parameters can be conducted.