Abstract: Rock mass in engineering practice is often subjected to circulating loads such as geological tectonic movement,engineering construction and secondary stress field,which shows different mechanical properties from monotonic loads.In order to study the mechanical properties of rock material under circulating load,the study summarized and analyzed from the 3 aspects of strength characteristics,deformation characteristics and failure characteristics,at the same time put forward some suggestions to the limitations of existing research:to study the effect of frequency on circulating mechanical characteristics in a wider frequency range,thus to reach more accurate conclusion;to study the circulating mechanical properties of rock materials by combining the existing mechanical theories with numerical simulation methods;scanning electron microscopy and on-situ CT scanning were used to conduct in-depth research on the microstructure of rock mechanical properties under circulating loading to explore the instability failure mechanism of rock materials.