In this work, the deformation resistance and energy dissipation of rock rings were investigated by using the 4D lattice spring model (4D-LSM). Firstly, the 4D-LSM was verified against existing experimental and numerical simulation results in terms of the influence of rock ring size on the failure pattern and strength. On this basis, empirical relationships of the influence of various factors, e.g. the porosity, heterogeneity, and thickness-diameter ratio, on the deformation resistance and energy dissipation of the rock ring were derived from numerical tests with the 4D-LSM. When considering the large deformation, it was found that the failure pattern of the rock ring would be different from the classical experimental and numerical observations. Moreover, different empirical relationships between the deformation resistance and energy dissipation as well as the material ultimate deformation were derived compared to these numerical tests considering small deformation only. Finally, the failure pattern, deformation resistance and energy dissipation of a composed structure made up from an array of rock rings were studied. Numerical results reveal that these relationships obtained for the single rock ring are also applicable to the composed structure.