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The purpose of this paper is to study the effects of the total bearing deformation on the performance of hydrodynamic thrust bearings.

Pressure distribution in the thrust bearing has been obtained using the Reynolds equation for the case of stable lubricant viscosity and isothermal conditions. Then, the deformation is found out by applying the constitutive equations for the linear elastic materials to both pad and runner. For the purpose of the generalization of the results, it is preferred to examine the case using non‐dimensional equations. The lubricant film thickness and pressure distribution before and after the deformation, the bearing deformation and the thrust load‐carrying capacity have been computed and compared for the steel runner‐steel pad and the steel runner‐bronze pad material pairs.

It is found that maximum load capacity loss occurs in the steel runner‐bronze pad pair as 3.03 per cent. Also, for a fixed load, when bearing dimensions are small, but deformations are large, the capacity loss due to runner deformations is nearly of the same order as those caused by pad deformations.

For small bearings heavily loaded, both pad and runner deformations should be taken into account.

In the relevant literature, there exist some papers, which consider the deformability of only one part of a thrust bearing. This paper differs from the previous ones in that the effects of the deformations of both pad and runner are taken into account in evaluating the performance of a thrust bearing.