Abstract: A series of experiments were conducted on red clay from Jiangxi, including confined lateral expansion and allowed lateral contraction tests on compacted soils under drying and wetting cycles with different overlying load. The crack development law of red clay in the process of drying and wetting cycles was analyzed from quantitative and qualitative point of view. It was revealed that for any number of drying and wetting cycles, the distribution density, length ratio and average width of the red clay were decreased with the increase of the load. With the increase of overlying load, after 7 times of dry wet cycles, fracture density, length ratio, average width decreased obviously and the crack inhibition was more obvious with overlying load. When the overlying load was greater than or equal to the expansion force of the soil, the specimen did not crack.