Work rolls in hot rolling mills are usually subjected to cyclic thermal loadings, induced by strip heating followed by water jet cooling. This work aims to present a simplified method for assessing transient temperature and thermal stress distribution in work roll of hot rolling mill. A nonlinear elasto-plastic stress analysis is performed. In the approach, based on the finite elements (FE) method, only the work roll (without the strip) is considered with a two-dimensional model. Because the length of the roll, a plane strain state is assumed. The work roll is considered an axisymmetric structure loaded by non-axisymmetric thermal loads, which can be solved by a semi-analytical approach using a harmonic model and Fourier series expansion. The two-dimensional problem is then reduced to a one-dimensional model, with a significant decrease in overall computational time. A comparison of the results obtained by the proposed semi-analytical approach with those obtained by a two-dimensional FE model is presented.