<p>Dynamic disturbances in rock engineering often propagate as stress waves. Although tensile stress waves are critical to fracture initiation and damage evolution, their transmission across discontinuities remains insufficiently understood, particularly across non-persistent rock joints. An experimental study is conducted to investigate tensile stress waves through non-persistent rock joints, with comparison to compressive stress waves. The results indicate that both transmission coefficients and energy transmission characteristics are influenced by joint persistence and incident wave amplitude. These effects are more pronounced under tensile stress waves than under compressive ones. For a given amplitude, tensile stress waves have higher transmission and energy transmission coefficients than compressive waves. For tensile stress waves, the transmission coefficient and energy transmission coefficient experience a nonlinear decrease, while for compressive stress waves, they show a linear pattern. Under increasing joint persistence, transmission and energy transmission coefficients are nonlinearly decreased under tensile stress waves, while linearly changed under compressive stress waves. These observations and analysis of percentage variations highlight the greater sensitivity of tensile stress wave propagation. The findings enhance understanding of the dynamic behavior of jointed rock masses and support stability assessments of rock engineering projects under dynamic disturbances.</p>