Indexing cloth radical at the bottom - the original meaning of 裂 was 'to tear cloth into pieces.' The semantic field expanded from torn fabric to all kinds of cracking and splitting. Same family as 裙 (skirt), 衫 (shirt), 袋 (bag) - clothing terms - plus modern figurative 分裂 (split, division).
Top 列 supplies the sound (liè - exact match) and a faint semantic of 'separating into a line/row.' 列 itself is 歹 (bones) + 刂 (knife) = bones laid out in a row, originally the act of dismembering. The cutting-apart nuance carries directly into 裂 'to split.'
