| Summary: | The deformation and failure of underground engineering are usually caused by unloading. In this work, triaxial unloading confining pressure tests are carried out to simulate the failure process of rock mass caused by unloading, analyze the crack-characteristic stress, and study the energy evolution of rock under unloading and the pre-peak and post-peak energy characteristics combined with the energy theory. The results show that, when the confining pressure increases from 5 MPa to 20 MPa, crack closure stress <i>σ</i><sub>cc</sub>, crack initiation stress <i>σ<sub>ci</sub></i>, dilatancy stress <i>σ<sub>cd</sub></i>, and peak stress <i>σ<sub>p</sub></i> are 6.34 times, 2.75 times, 1.93 times, and 1.66 times higher than the original, respectively. By comparing the increase in crack-characteristic stress, it can be found that the confining pressure has a large effect on the crack closure stress and crack initiation stress, while the dilatation stress and peak stress have relatively little influence. From the perspective of energy evolution, the pre-peak axial absorption energy <i>U</i><sub>1</sub> increases exponentially, the elastic energy <i>U<sup>e</sup></i> is similar to <i>U</i><sub>1</sub>, and the circumferential consumption energy <i>U</i><sub>3</sub> and dissipation energy <i>U<sup>d</sup></i> are small. After reaching the peak stress, the growth rate of <i>U</i><sub>1</sub> decreases slightly, <i>U<sup>e</sup></i> decreases rapidly, and <i>U</i><sub>3</sub> increases rapidly but only as a small fraction of the total energy, while <i>U<sup>d</sup></i> grows almost exponentially and rapidly becomes the main part of the energy. Under each crack-characteristic stress state, the energy characteristic parameters gradually increase with the increase in confining pressure, which is manifested by the increase in slope in the linear fitting formula of energy characteristic parameters. The release process of the releasable elastic energy after the peak stress can be divided into three stages of “slow–fast–slow”, and the energy release process shows an obvious confining pressure effect.
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