Abstract: On the basis of the relations between energy dissipation, energy release and global failure, with integrated experimental test and numerical simulation, a new strength criterion has been proposed for hard and soft rocks. By adopting the combination of experiment and theory analysis method, the rock yield and failure criteria are studied. The strength criterion of rock mass is build based on criteria strength and structural failure of rocks and the diffusion coefficient of elastic strain energy; The failure strength for rock salt and granite is calculated and with the following criteria respectively: Mohr-Coulomb criterion, Murrell criterion, triple shear energy yield criterion, unified energy yield criterion, Hoek-Brown criterion and yield and failure revised criterion. The results show that based on the elastic strain energy of rock strength criterion of the calculated result is more accurate and the error is more stable as well especially under true triaxial tests and the intrinsic mechanism of above-mentioned results is analyzed. The strength criterion has less parameters and has simple, so, it is significant for the accurate quantitative analysis of rock yield and failure characters.

Key words: elastic strain energy, strength criterion, diffusion coefficient