Abstract: With the development of computer technologies and computational methods, numerical simulation is widely employed in solving unsteady flow and heat transfer problems of hot crude oil pipelines.The advances in numerical simulation on unsteady flow and heat transfer of hot crude oil pipeline in the latest three years are reviewed in this paper, including thermal analysis of crude oil pipeline during the overhaul of corrosion protective coating, simulation of crude oil pipeline batch pipelining oils of different temperatures and thermal analysis of two pipelines laying in a same ditch etc.Finally the prospects of numerical simulation of unsteady flow and heat transfer of hot oil pipelines are presented.