Experimental observations on unpressurized dynamically loaded hydrodynamic bearings and squeeze-film dampers indicate that cavitation bubbles, once formed, do not completely redissolve upon the reappearance of positive pressures. Instead, one is left with a spongy compressible fluid. Assuming this to be a homogeneous gas-liquid mixture, with density and viscosity dependent on pressure, the load capacity of squeeze-film dampers is compared with that obtained using hitherto adopted cavitation models which assume an incompressible lubricant with the fluid-film pressures being set to the saturated vapor pressure (SVP) of the lubricant whenever the pressure falls below the SVP. To save computation effort, a short bearing approximation is derived for the compressible Reynolds equation, so that comparisons apply to narrow dampers only (i.e. to dampers with length-to-diameter ratios less than 0.25). It is shown that for circular orbit squeeze-film dampers, best agreement is obtained with the incompressible model where the SVP is taken as zero absolute, though depending on the orbit eccentricity and the value of a dimensionless parameter called the squeeze number, commonly used π and 2π film cavitation models may also give excellent agreement.Presented at the 40th Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada May 6–9, 1985