Abstract:The rock material is heterogeneous from the construction of microscopic view;and the heterogeneous characteristic is one of most important factors that affect the rock failure pattern. In order to analyze this effect,a micro-heterogeneous physical cellular automata model(Mh-PCA model) is introduced according to cellular automata theory from general power view. In this model,the Moore neighbor is adopted and the Weibull distribution is used for simulating the rock heterogeneousness. Using the Mh-PCA model,the evolvements of rock failure are simulated for four kinds of materials with different homogeneous degrees;and the results show that the heterogeneous characteristic has a great effect on the rock failure;the larger the material homogeneous degree is,the fewer crack branches the rock has. All the results are in agreement with experimental results. The physical cellular automata theory can give a new idea for studying the rock failure.