The thermal models of the grinding process are an important tool for predicting temperature to minimize workpiece thermal damage while improving process efficiency. According to different shapes of contact area, the analytical thermal model of arc moving heat source for rectangular workpiece is deduced and an established numerical model is chosen for comparison in this paper. An experiment with three thermocouples is carried out to validate the max grinding temperature and the character of temperature distribution predicted by the analytical and numerical model in this article. Various experiments were conducted to provide a broad range of process parameters. The comparison results show that: the values of max grinding temperature predicted by analytical and numerical model have well agreement with the measurement results in experiments and the relative errors are within 20%; the max grinding temperature values measured at the location of cut-in and cut-out are larger than the value in the middle of workpiece. The max grinding temperature and character of temperature distribution predicted by analytical and numerical model is validated by the experimental results. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.