Electro-hydraulic pulsed discharge is a technology that can generate powerful shock waves in liquids, which can be used to effectively fracture rocks. In this study, indoor experiments were firstly carried out using two pieces of self-made concrete samples subjected to multiple electro-hydraulic shock waves to observe the fracturing effect. Then, using the nonlinear finite element software Ls-dyna, the electro-hydraulic pulsed discharge was considered to be equivalent to cyclic underwater explosion to obtain an indirect simulation of the rock fracturing process caused by the electro-hydraulic shock waves. The effects of discharge distance, charging energy, confining pressure and discharge times on rock fracturing were analyzed, and the order of the influence degree of each factor on crack formation was given by means of orthogonal analysis. The results show that, after 30 times impact loads generated by underwater pulsed discharge, crush zones, annular cracks, corner cracks and lateral cracks appeared on the concrete samples. The annular cracks, corner cracks, and lateral cracks can be mainly caused by reflected tensile waves, circumferential tensile waves, and water wedge effect. Crush zones were mainly caused by the head-on impact of shock waves and water wedge effect. The formation of rock fractures cab be inhibited by increasing the confining pressure, decreasing the charging energy, increasing the discharge distance and decreasing the number of discharges. The order of the inhibition effect to crack formation of the influence factors is confining pressure, charging energy, discharge distance and the number of discharges.