Abstract: By means of investigation on acoustic characteristics during the failure process of weakly consolidated sandstone under uniaxial compression in Hongqinghe coal mine，and according to the mechanical parameters and acoustic emission signal collected from the tests，the curves of stress-strain，stress-time-cumulative count rate，stress-time-absolute energy rate，and the stress-strain-the cumulative count rate，stress-time-absolute energy rate before and after the peak value are drawn.According to the stress-strain curves，the rock failure is divided into two types：one is the traditional four stages of rock failure mode；the other is the five stages of failure modes.The ductility stage with stable stress and increasing strain appears at five-stage failure mode after the strain softens.Compared with the acoustic emission characteristics between the two failure modes，the acoustic emission changes a lot after the peak.Under the same compressive strength，samples with less elastic modulus produce more acoustic emission phenomena，but its absolute energy produced are the same.Cumulative count rate can be used to judge whether the samples are completely destructed.

Key words: Weakly consolidated sandstone, Uniaxial loading, Acoustic emission, Destruction form, Cementation ductile phase