Hydraulic servo valves are widely used in various fluid power systems because of their fast response and precision control. In this paper, we studied the effect of metering notch shapes and amount of their openings on the flow characteristics within the spool valve using a computational fluid dynamic (CFD) code, FLUENT. To obtain the results for more realistic operating conditions, viscous heating due to the jet flow and viscosity variation of the hydraulic fluid with temperature were considered. For two types of notch shape, streamlines, oil temperature and viscosity distributions, and variations of flow and friction forces acting on spool were showed. The flow and friction forces affected by the metering notch shapes and their openings, and oil temperature rise near metering notch was significant enough to results in the jamming phenomenon. A thermohydrodynamic (THD) flow analysis adopted in this paper can be used in optimum design of hydraulic servo valves.