AbstractA problem common to most numerical methods of analysing the vibration of a rigid body on an elastic half space is indentified especially as regards the arbitrary truncation of the semi‐infinite half space or the numerically expensive computations involved in some of the methods. This paper presents a boundary integral equation (BIE) method of defining a finite domain to replace the half space and consists of evaluating the BIE over the domain. A mathematical justification is provided for defining the domain, and the error involved in such truncation of the half space in shown to be small. Yet the computations are very cheap owing to the simple trigonometric/algebraic functions involved in the BIE. The accuracy of the method is quite commendable especially as seen from the results presented for the circular foundation for which analytical and experimental solutions are available for compariso