AbstractThe present paper deals with a numerical investigation of the hydrodynamic lubrication of a porous squeeze film between two circular discs. To this purpose, the thin film (reduced) Navier Stokes equations and a generalised porous medium model are solved. The numerical results show that the effect of the porous disc is to reduce the lubricating properties of the fluid film. This effect is increased during the squeezing action. In addition, it is shown that the film pressure, the load‐carrying capacity and the velocity field based only on the Darcy model are predicted higher than those obtained from the generalised porous medium model. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.