AbstractThe survey of the overburden deformation and failure caused by underground mining may provide reliable guidance for mining design and safe production. This paper deals with the similarity conditions and the practicability of model experiment, makes the dynamic survey of the electric field characteristics changes of overburden at different mining stages, makes inversion with the experiment data and uncovers the response characteristics of resistivity changes with overburden deformation and failure. The experiment results indicate that the overburden deformation and failure cause the electric characteristics changes of rock strata, the response characteristics of resistivity changes vary with the failure degrees in different failure zones, and they are corresponding.