The construction of shield machines will confront complex geological types, to solve the safety problem caused by the material toughness of plastic drainage boards (also known as PVD) during shield tunneling, a new type of shield machine cutter for breaking plastic drainage board is proposed in this paper. Firstly, a mechanical model of the interaction between the cutter and the material is established, calculation analysis and comparison are carried out. Then, the cutting ability of the new cutter on drainage board under different conditions is tested, and corresponding experimental data are obtained, verifying the advantage of the new cutter proposed in this paper. The finite element analysis software LS-DYNA is used for simulation and based on a plastic drainage board cutting project in Singapore, an experiment platform for shield machine cutter to break plastic drainage board is designed to conduct experiments. This work will provide technical guidance for the material cutting engineering of actual drainage boards.