Abstract: Coarse-grained soils are widely distributed in nature. They have a good compaction performance, including high density, strong water permeability, high shear strength, small settlement. They are not easy to produce liquefaction under the earthquake load. They have been widely used in earth dam construction. On the basis of reviewing a large number of related publications, some advances of the research on the coarse-grained soils are summarized in this paper. They include the shear strength, the deformation behaviors, the stress-strain relationship characteristics and several problems in test. The authors presents some of their own thinking, pointing out the direction of future research on the coarse-grained soils according to the existing knowledge.