Abstract: Coal and gas outburst has a serious threat to the safe production of coal mine. Physical simulation of coal and gas outburst receives more and more attention during the major coal production countries around the world. A lot of literatures were consulted in this paper, and advances in physical simulation of coal and gas outburst in nearly thirty years were summarized. It shows that the physical simulation of coal and gas outburst has the characteristics of multi-dimensions, multi-field, multi-scale, and the overall performance of the test device has been greatly improved. However, the understanding of the mechanism still stays in the hypothesis stage of qualitative interpretation. Some prospects were put up considering its shortcomings in order to explore its physical essence. Thus, the quantitative evaluation system of outburst danger and theoretical criterion can be formed, which provides a theoretical foundation for the prediction and prevention of coal and gas outburst in the field.