Taking red-bed soft rock in Shengzhou-Xinchang area of Zhejiang Province as the research object, The surface energy characteristics of red bed soft rock collapse in this area were investigated, based on the principle of energy dissipation, by analyzing the energy conversion, transfer and dissipation of three groups of different compositions of red-bed soft rock in the process of disintegration under the action of wet and dry cycling, the law of energy conversion from absorbed energy to surface energy during the process of disintegration of red-bed soft rock was obtained. The results show that with the increasing number of wet and dry cycles, the cumulative increase of surface energy of red bed soft rocks in this area has three different processes, with a gentle increase at the beginning. In the middle stage, the surface energy increases sharply and the growth rate becomes faster and faster. The cumulative increase of surface energy gradually maintained a stable state in the late disintegration period. The experiment also shows that the higher the clay mineral content is, the more surface energy is generated and the worse the disintegration resistance is. The energy dissipation model proposed in this paper provides reference value for treating various red bed soft rock problems in Shengzhou-Xinchang area of Zhejiang Province.