Centrifugal casting is an important process to produce metallic pipes in general and cylinders for steel rolling mills. A mathematical model was proposed for the heat transfer during solidification of centrifugally cast pipes. The heat transfer coefficient at the metal-mold interface was determined as a function of time by the inverse solution technique. The inverse solution was obtained using experimental cooling curves available in the literature for a centrifugally cast-iron pipe. The inverse solution showed, for the first time, that the behavior with time of the heat transfer coefficient at the metal-mold interface is analogous to that observed in traditional static casting processes: an initial relatively large value decreases exponentially with time. A mathematical model for the heat transfer at the metal-mold interface based on fundamental heat transfer principles was proposed. In this model, the heat conduction and radiation in the gap formed at the metal-mold interface, as well as the thermal and plastic deformation of the solid shell, were taken into account. This model, applied to predict the solidification of a cast-iron tube in the centrifugal casting process, enabled the calculation of cooling curves that are in excellent agreement with experimentally measured curves.