In some cases, high retaining walls are necessary to counteract lateral earth pressure. However, large gravity walls might not be feasible due to economic and spatial limitation. So optimised solution for this case is challenging part to study. Thus horizontal member is incorporated into the design known as relief shelf to reduce lateral earth pressure on the wall (Khan et al. in Reduction of lateral earth pressure on retaining wall using relief shelf: a numerical study, 2016). The study of retaining wall with pressure relief shelf is somewhat an unnoticed area in the field of geotechnical engineering. Very fewer studies have been carried out so far on this topic. Due to less theoretical and experimental work has been done in this field, the study of this type of retaining wall is, therefore, important to see their performance. The analytical and practical solutions regarding reduction in earth pressure and observation of deflection for particular case is interesting to observe (Huidrom and Deb in Analysis and design of cantilever retaining wall with and without pressure relief shelf, vol 7, no 4, 2022). Hence, this study is aimed at understand the behaviour of such walls and to explore the effectiveness of these wall to reduce earth pressure and lateral thrust (Shehata in Use of retaining walls with relief shelves as an economic solution, 2016). A cantilever retaining wall model is used to check deflection for various test with backfill material as manufactured sand, i.e., non-cohesive soil (Chauhan and Dasaka in Performance of a rigid retaining wall with relief shelves, vol 32, no 3, 2018). Test is carried out for retaining wall without relief shelf of varying thickness and retaining wall with relief shelf at middle of stem of varying width size (Khan et al. in Reduction of lateral earth pressure on retaining wall using relief shelf: a numerical study, 2016; Chauhan et al. in Investigation of failure of a rigid retaining wall with relief shelves, 2016). The deflection for all these cases is observed and compared with analytical as well as STAAD Pro results. The important concept in these study is rupture surface. This rupture surface is hypothetical plane along which failure or sliding occurs in the soil behind the wall. Thus, the provision of relief shelf extending beyond the rupture surface in the backfill can considerably change the pressure diagram of backfill soil and reduce earth pressure on the retaining wall and subsequently increase the stability of retaining structure. Retaining wall model of thickness 6 and 8 mm cantilevered at bottom are used and deflections are recorded with and without relief shelf. Thus, relief shelf of 100 mm width at H/2 gives deflection of 15.72 mm, relief shelf of 200 mm width at H/2 gives deflection 4.6 mm, relief shelf of 300 mm width at H/2 which cuts failure slope deflects zero, and when three relief shelves of varying width are used no deflection is recorded and STAAD Pro result shows deflection of it towards backfill material. So deflection diminishes with an increase in relief shelf width and when width of relief shelf cut failure slope it did not deflect. However, the position and width of the relief shelf are found to be important governing factors for maximizing the reduction of lateral thrust and optimisation of retaining wall (Que et al. in Active earth pressure against cantilever retaining walls with the long relief shelf rotating about the bottom, vol 22, no 10, 2022).