The dispersion characteristics of PD is carried out to figure out the accuracy of peridynamics method (PD) and its simulation effects on rock spalling. Firstly, based on the dispersion analyses of the PD discrete equations, it is found that the numerical dispersion is more apparent with increasing the domain size if the space step is fixed; with the number of nodes in the domain fixed, the numerical dispersion becomes weaker when the space step decreases; the numerical dispersion also gets weaker with the increase of the nodes at a fixed domain. Subsequently, by comparing it to the traditional finite difference method, it is pointed out that the PD discrete equations can be written as the combination of a series of differential equations, whose truncation error is the second order infinitesimal of the domain radius (δ); when δ is set as the space step, PD method is equivalent to the central difference method, owning the highest calculational accuracy. Finally, the PD method is used to explore the one-dimensional spalling phenomenon of rock bar. The effects of space step and domain size on computing results are discussed, and the spalling time, spalling locations and damage distribution are further given. The effectiveness of PD method is also verified by contrast with the spalling test. It is shown that PD can be used for rock spalling analysis and high-precision results can be obtained by PD method coupled with FDM, costing less time and owning a clear advantage.