Abstract: As an efficient and cost -effective shallow ground improvement technology, rolling dynamic compaction (RDC) has been widely used in various industries such as highway engineering, airport engineering and port engineering at home and abroad, but the influencing factors and rules of improvement effect of the RDC are still seldom examined. By using a self -developed RDC simulation test equipment, a laboratory investigation on influences of factors such as weight of impact module, shape of impact module, working speed, initial dense state of soil and passes of RDC on the improvement effect of RDC for sand are carried out. The results show that (1) the mass of impact module has major influence on the improvement effect of RDC for sand, and while the weight of impact module is greater than 10 t, the influencing depth of RDC increases obviously and the most significant improvement is within the depth of 2.4~3.6 m. (2) The sands with the initial loose and medium -dense state have better improvement effect of RDC. (3) The improvement effect of triangular impact module is better than the quadrilateral and pentagonal impact modules. (4) While the working speed is less than 12 km/h, the improvement effect of RDC for sand increases with the increasing of working speed, but the speed needs to be decreased to be 9 km/h to achieve better improvement of the superficial zone of ground (around 1.4 m deep).(5) The improvement effect also increases with the increasing pass of RDC during 12 passes compaction. The research results can provide reference for the design and construction of improvement of RDC for sand.