Abstract: Based on water absorptivity tests, single compression tests and shear tests of sandstone under the different times of drying-wetting cycle, the response rules of physical mechanical behaviors of sandstone to cyclic drying-wetting effect such as deformation behavior, intensity behavior and failure characteristic are analyzed systematically in this paper. The tests results show that the relation between water absorption, quality loss rate and drying-wetting cycle effect is positive related, while the relations between compression strength, elastic modulus, cohesive force, inter friction angle and drying-wetting cycle effect is negative correlated. Comparing with native state, when the times of drying-wetting cycle is 15, the decrease range of compression strength is up to 78.96%, and cohesive force and inter friction angle are also down 78.4% and 31.33% respectively. In addition, the need to point out that no matter the change trends of curves are increase or decrease, its rangeability is all "big then small", and finally tends to a constant. The failure characteristics of sandstone are also influenced by drying-wetting cycle effect: the less the test times are done, the more obvious the brittle damage characters is, conversely the stronger the ductility characters is, that is, with the strengthen of drying-wetting effect, the sandstone damage present a transformation law from brittleness to ductility.