Although the average macroscopic stresses are compressive during die compaction, tensile stresses develop locally, and lead to fragmentation in low ductility particles. In this article, this phenomenon is analyzed using finite element discretization of an assembly of particles. The simulations show that there are two stages in die compaction, an early stage in which increased levels of tensile stresses develop in a number of particles located along discrete load transmission paths, and a second stage where the increasing homogeneity of the stress field leads to a decrease of the number of particles developing tensile principal stresses. A comparison between two scenarios with interparticle friction of mu = 0 and mu = 0.5 is presented. It is shown that: (1) high friction results in a higher number of particles under tensile stresses especially at low relative density, and (2) the peak fraction of material under high tensile stresses is double for mu = 0.5 compared to the frictionless case, and occurs at similar to85% versus 88% for mu = 0.