As a key intra-blanket component, ceramic pebble beds are used in solid tritium breeding blankets to achieve tritium breeding and neutron multiplication for fusion reactors. The packing characteristics affect the tritium breeding ratio (TBR). In this study, the effects of different friction coefficients on the pebble bed packing characteristics were analysed. As the friction coefficient increased, the packing structure became looser and the average packing factor was lower, which resulted in decreased pebble bed stiffness. The pebble bed stress-strain relationship under different numbers of cyclic loads was studied. As the number of load cycles increased, the stiffness of the pebble bed stabilised. Meanwhile, the larger the friction coefficient, the more cycles the pebble bed structure needed to reach stability. There were no more changes to the stress-strain relationship after multiple compressions of the pebble bed structure.