Journal bearings are used in many applications. An increase of their load carrying capacity and/or decrease of their losses may allow for savings of an enormous amount of energy. One way to enhance the characteristics of journal bearings is to modify the surface texture of the stator. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the influence of a textured rotor on journal bearing characteristics. Computational Fluid Dynamics is used to model the flow between the rotor and the journal. The full Navier-Stokes equations are solved under unsteady conditions with the commercial software ANSYS CFX 11. A two-dimensional geometry is used to model the bearing. In order to make a simulation, a separate rotor and stator are made and are attached to each other using a rotor-stator interface. Firstly, a single mesh for the smooth journal bearing is used to evaluate possible numerical artefacts created by the interface. The results illustrate a difference of 2.8 % in the load carrying capacity. Simulation with a dimpled rotor followed. Comparison between a dimpled rotor and smooth rotor shows no significant increase in load carrying capacity of the journal bearing when thermal effects are not taken into account.