When the gently inclined coal seam working face is mined to the fault affected area, the pressure distribution of the support is unbalanced, and the deformation and damage of the surrounding rock of the mining roadway are serious. In order to systematically study the failure law of the overburden rock of the working face near the fault, this paper takes the working face 250602 of Zaoquan Coal Mine as the background, adopts the method of combining theoretical analysis, numerical simulation and field measurement, and simplifies the overburden structure of the working face into three mechanical models according to whether there is a fault in the working face and the spatial location relationship between the working face and the fault, which are fixed at both ends, fixed at one end, simply supported at one end, and cantilever beam structure. Based on the three mechanical models, the analytical solutions of the roof deflection of the three models were solved by using the superposition principle, and the buckling calibration method was introduced to analyze whether the roof of the working face had buckling effect. On the basis of theoretical analysis, the UDEC discrete element numerical method is used to compare and analyze the development height, basic roof subsidence, and overburden failure mode of the "two zones" of overburden rock, so as to reveal the failure law of overburden mining in the gently inclined coal seam working face in the fault affected area. The results show that when the working face is located on the upper wall side of the fault, the basic top subsidence is higher than that of conventional mining, and the rock layer collapse form in the fault affected area is a "pile-up" structure. When the working face is located on the lower side of the fault, the basic top subsidence is larger, and the failure form of overall slip is present near the fault. At the same time, the reliability of the numerical simulation is verified by the roof drilling. The research results provide a theoretical basis for solving the problems of mine pressure control and roadway surrounding rock support under the influence of faults.