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Slurry wall protection is the key to the success of the design and construction of underground diaphragm walls; however, in the analysis of its grooving mechanism, the original slurry in the surrounding environment was usually equivalated to the slurry pressure, while the slurry penetration characteristics and the formation of a filter cake were often neglected, leading to obvious defects in the existing literature. In this paper, by combining computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the discrete element method (DEM), a model based on the strain softening constitutive equation was proposed to investigate the formation of a filter cake by the effects of slurry penetration and cementation and to calculate the stability of grooving. In this model, material parameters were used to describe the mechanical properties of the filter cake, and the microscopic parameters that were calibrated through experiments were used to explore the optimal particle radius ratio of the filter cake. Then, the feasibility and rationality of the model in describing the slurry penetration and failure trends were verified through comparative analysis. In the stability analysis, the safety factor was introduced to evaluate the impact of the slurry and other influencing factors on the grooving process. The results show that the properties of slurry and the environmental factors such as groundwater level have significant effects on the formation of the filter cake and stress distribution, thereby affecting the grooving effect. The findings of this study can provide useful guidance and reference for theoretical research and practical engineering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]