Double-wheel trench cutters display reduced efficiency while cutting through hard or extremely hard rock strata, leading to significant wear on their picks. A high-pressure water jet-pick combined rock-breaking method (HPC) for double-wheel trench cutters is proposed, addressing the challenges of low efficiency and high pick wear when cutting hard rock strata. The HPC mode integrates high-pressure water jets to precut grooves on both sides of the picks, creating free surfaces that facilitate rock fragmentation. Experiments were conducted with the combination of high-pressure water jet cutting and linear pick cutting under the HPC mode with granite. The HPC rock-breaking efficiency was compared with that of conventional pick-relieved cutting (PRC) and pick-unrelieved cutting (PUC) modes. A numerical model based on the continuum-discontinuum element method was developed to investigate the rock-breaking mechanism with water jet assistance. The mechanism of rock breaking by pick with bilateral water jet assistance has been revealed. The main conclusions are as follows: (1) The HPC mode reduced the average horizontal and normal rock-breaking forces by 36.02% and 48.78%, respectively, compared with PRC, and by 32.07% and 42.85%, respectively, compared with PUC. Furthermore, compared with the PRC and PUC modes, the HPC mode decreased specific energy consumption by 88.58% and 93.84% and increased the coarseness index of rock debris by 159.28% and 189.77%, respectively. These improvements indicate a transition from localized fragmentation to large-chunk stripping during rock breaking, attributed to the free surfaces created by water jet grooving. (2) The free surfaces created by the water jet altered the rock mass displacement vector from radial to horizontal, promoting the formation of Λ-shaped fractures and increasing tensile and tensile-shear fractures. This mechanism reduced the intermediate principal stress and strain energy within the rock mass, reducing the difficulty of rock breaking. The HPC mode thus offers a promising solution for improving the efficiency of double-wheel trench cutters in hard rock excavation, with the potential for broader application in underground diaphragm wall construction.
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