In order to study the effect of different water contents on bursting potential index of hard coal seam, the article took the work face of Xinzhouyao coal mine 8935 as the engineering background, carried out the bursting potential experiments of coal under different water contents and analyzed the dynamic failure duration,elastic energy index,burst energy index and bursting potential characteristics with the change of water contents. The results show that bursting potential of hard coal seam decreases with the increase of water content, meanwhile dynamic failure duration first increases with the increase of water content and then decreases.The elastic energy index and burst energy index show decreasing trend with the increase of water content.The burst energy index is more influenced by water contents.