Physical experiments ' reliability and veracity are largely influenced by the characteristics of model sand. So it ' s a key technology to improve the accuracy of physical experiments to comprehensively understand the model sand characteristics. For the complexity of the sediment transport and multifarious simulated objects, the selection of model sands are tremendous different in engineering application. In this paper, the previous achievements related to the characteristics of the model sand,such as physical properties, mechanics features and motion behavior,are systematically summarized, and related problems that need further study are discussed on the basis of the present research work, so as to provide guidance on the work of physical experiments.