This paper addresses two fundamental thermal issues of tribology in orthogo
nal machining with a sharp tool, namely, the nature of the apparent heat pa
rtition in the shear plane and the variable heat partition at the chip-tool
interface. A new model for the shear plane heat source was developed which
does not require any assumption regarding the heat partition fraction a pr
iori. Instead, this information is obtained as part of the solution. Simila
rly, a functional analysis approach was developed to determine the variable
heat partition and the temperature distribution at the chip-tool interface
due to the frictional heat source. The distribution of temperature in the
chip, the tool, and the work material was determined analytically consideri
ng the combined effect of these two heat sources in orthogonal machining. T
he new analytical model was verified for a wide range of Peclet numbers, N-
Pe (0.5-40) using the available experimental data from the literature.