For two kinds of typical thrust pad bearings,namely,inclined bearing and step bearings,the mathematical models of hydrodynamic lubrication considering the thermal effect of lubricants were developed. The multi-grid method was used to solve the pressure field,and the column-by-column relaxation scheme was used to solve the temperature field only on the finest grid. Based on two groups of thermal boundary conditions:(1) the stationary surface is adiabatic yet the mov- ing surface maintains ambient temperature;(2) the stationary surface maintains ambient temperature yet the moving one is adiabatic,the load carrying capacity of these two typical thrust bearings was compared and analyzed. Results show that thermal wedge contributes to their load carrying capacity definitely,in fact the carrying capacity is determined by the com- bined effects of geometric wedge and thermal wedge. It is also found that thermal wedge effect plays the dominate role when geometric wedge effect is weak,therefore,the thrust pad bearings would achieve higher load carrying capacity under the second thermal boundary condition.