Abstract: Fracture of the inclined thick-hard roof structure is the direct cause of dynamic disasters such as rock burst. To clarify the fracture law and energy evolution characteristics of the inclined thick-hard roof, taking the 1303 working face with inclined thick-hard roof in Lilou Coal Mine as the engineering background, a physical model with a geometric similarity ratio of 1:200 was established. Combined with displacement and stress sensors as well as a micro-seismic monitoring system, the stress, displacement, energy and micro-seismic activity during the overburden failure process were monitored. The fracture evolution law, stress distribution and energy evolution characteristics of the inclined thick-hard roof during the working face advance were analyzed. The results show that mining at the 1303 working face induces the progressive caving of the main roof, lower strata, key stratum and higher strata, with the average periodic caving interval increasing successively, forming an asymmetric overburden caving structure. The stress curve of the main roof during working face advance is always higher than that of the key stratum. When the working face advances to 170 m, the stresses of the main roof and key stratum reach the peak synchronously, and macroscopic fracture occurs in the key stratum. The strain energy distribution of the overburden during working face advance presents a phased evolution characteristic. The accumulated energy of the main roof is significantly higher than that of the key stratum when the working face advances to 50 m. The strain energy of the key stratum gradually approaches that of the main roof during the advance of 90-130 m, and exceeds that of the main roof at 170 m. The micro-seismic activity during the advance of the inclined working face shows a “double-period nesting” law. The peak interval of micro-seismic event counts is 24-32 m, corresponding to the fracture of the main roof. When the working face advances to 165-170 m, both the number of micro-seismic events and the micro-seismic energy reach the peak simultaneously.