Heat transfer enhancement is an active and important field of engineering research since increases in the effectiveness of heat exchangers through suitable heat transfer augmentation techniques can result in considerable technical advantages and savings of costs. Considerable enhancements were demonstrated in the present work by using small cylindrical pins on surfaces of heat exchangers. A partly quantitative theoretical treatment of the proposed method is presented. It uses simple relationships for the conductive and convective heat transfer to derive an equation that shows which parameters permit the achievement of heat transfer enhancements. Experiments are reported that demonstrate the effectiveness of the results of the proposed approach. It is shown that the suggested method of heat transfer enhancements is much more effective than existing methods, since it results in an increase in heat transfer area (like fins) and also an increase in the heat transfer coefficient. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.