In this paper, we are going to obtain numerical solutions of the improved Boussinesq equation with the aid of Galerkin quadratic B-spline finite element method. To test the accuracy and efficiency of the current method, four test problems have been used. These are solitary wave movement, interaction of two solitary waves, wave break-up and blow-up of solutions. Their results have been compared with those available in the literature for different values of space and time steps. Also, the error norms L 2 and L ∞ have been computed and presented in comparison.