The compacted clay liner used in the landfill site will produce cracks due to the natural wet-dry cycling, which will affect the permeability of the soil. This paper selected a kind of kaolin with a diameter of 6.18cm and height of 4cm small ring knife to make sample, which was used to study the effect of the whole shrinkage of small size specimen on the development of surface cracks in different temperature and wet-dry cycles. The results shows that the small size of the sample is extremely easy to produce the whole shrinkage with the increase of the dehydration time, which restrains the generation of surface cracks and eventually leads to the destruction along the side surface. Under the condition of high temperature dehydration, proper wet-dry cycling times can reduce the effect of the whole shrinkage on the cracking.