Abstract. Numerical solutions of the Rosenau-Burgers equation based on the cubic B-spline finite element method are introduced. The backward Euler method is used for discretization in time, and the obtained nonlinear algebraic system is changed to a linear system by the Newton's method. We show that those methods are unconditionally stable. Two test problems are studied to demonstrate the accuracy of the proposed method. The computational results indicate that numerical solutions are in good agreement with exact solutions.