Abstract: Waterpro of coal pillars under long-term saturation are susceptible to creep-induced reduction of the elastic core,internal crack propagation,and eventual water inrush disasters. Investigating the creep behavior of coal pillars and establishing a suitable creep model are therefore essential. This study used natural and water-saturated coal samples from the eastern Chenghe mining area to conduct conventional triaxial compression and triaxial creep tests. The results show that during stable creep,the ratio of creep strain to instantaneous strain decreases with increasing axial stress under constant confining pressure. Saturated coal samples exhibited larger instantaneous and creep strains than natural samples at each loading level,with creep strains approximately one to two times greater. As confining pressure increased,the increment in creep strain progressively diminished,especially at 3 MPa,where the increase was only 5.7%. At 1 MPa confining pressure,the instantaneous elastic modulus of natural coal samples was 1.2 times that of saturated samples; at 3 MPa,it was nearly three times greater—specifically,2.93 times that of saturated samples and 2.41 times that of natural samples. Based on the observed creep characteristics,a new five-element nonlinear visco-elasto-plastic creep constitutive model was developed. Model parameters were fitted using nonlinear least-squares regression,showing a strong correlation between the experimental creep curves and model predictions(average fitting coefficient of 0.975),which validates the model's applicability. The parameters derived from this creep model provide important data for future determination of waterproof coal pillar width.