Thermal crown of roll is an important factor, which affects strip profile. It is necessary to analyze the temperature field and thermal crown of roll for hot strip mill. A new simplified finite element method (FEM) was used to analyze the temperature field and thermal crown of roll, and corresponding models were built according to the practical boundary conditions. Transient roll temperature field and thermal crown were simulated by ANSYS FEM software with considering transient thermal contact and complex boundary condition. Temperature and thermal crown variations on roll surface nodes were obtained. The thermal crown results of roll obtained by FEM simulation were in good agreement with the measured data, indicating that simplified FEM models and results were correct.