Abstract: Experiments for rock failure process under uniaxial compression were carried out via the acoustic emission (AE) locating techniques to study the evolution process of failure elements and percolation characteristics during rocks failure. The results showed that the 3-D location of AE events directly reflects the processes of initiation, propagation and evolution of micro-cracks. Dividing the failure elements in rocks by locating AE events, the orderly and centralized self-organizing evolution of failure elements was shown from random distribution. Before the rock failure due to instability, the number of failure clusters and the relationship of negative power exponent between the scale and the number of failure clusters tend to increase slowly, which suggests that the failure elements begin to swarm in a large area, thus causing the rock in stable fracture phase to turn into unstable fracture phase. When the probability of failure comes up to a certain value, the strain of rock begins increasing abruptly. The experimental study on rock percolation via dividing failure elements in accordance to AE locating events is a new way for studying rock failure mechanics.