Much attention has been paid to the influence of cavitation on the performance of a sliding bearing, but conventional analysis methods can not exactly describe the influence. Therefore, a reasonable cavitation method is desired, with which tribological performances of the bearing can be improved. Based on the computational fluid dynamics(CFD）and Rayleigh-Plesset(PRE）model, the influence of cavitation is studied by the commercial software CFX module. The numerical results show that both the friction force and the friction coefficient decrease, compared with the corresponding results without the consideration of cavitation effect, which is caused by the reduce in the lubricant viscosity due to the cavitation effect. With the increases in the eccentricity ratio, width diameter ratio and rotating speed, the mean vaporization ratio becomes severer.