To accurately simulate the crushing process of the ore in the crusher based on the discrete element method (DEM), the modelling of large-sized iron ore particles based on the bonded-particle model needs to be accurately performed. Through the uniaxial compression test, in this paper, the influence of the normal stiffness per unit area, shear stiffness per unit area, critical normal stress, critical shear stress, and the radius of the filling sphere on the bonded-particle model performances, including the compressive strength and the average gradient of stress-strain, are first explored based on EDEM software. On this basis, a calibration method for the bonding parameters of the bonded-particle model is proposed. The results show that the compressive strength of the bonded-particle model is jointly determined by the critical normal stress and the critical tangential stress that they are small, and it is affected by the large radius of the filling sphere. When the critical normal stress and the filling sphere radius are in small, the variation of the average gradient of stress-strain is significant. Further, taking three compressive strength values as the target values, the reliability and validity of the calibration method are preliminarily verified by the DEM simulation. (C) 2020 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.