Pin fin array is a commonly used cooling structure in a gas turbine blade. Based upon the conventional pin fin cooling structure, this paper proposed a novel cooling structure with detached pin fin arrays. In the Reynolds number range of 8 200 to 50  500, a comparative experimental study was conducted to obtain the pressure loss and heat transfer characteristics in the cooling channels with detached pin fin arrays and with conventional pin fin arrays respectively. The results indicated that, compared to the counterpart of the pin fin channel, the detached pin fin channel has higher average Nusselt numbers and significantly reduced pressure loss over the studied Reynolds number range. Moreover, threedimensional conjugate computations were carried out for similar experimental conditions, and the computations showed the detailed characteristics in the distribution of the velocity and turbulence level in the flow, which revealed the underlying mechanisms for the associated pressure loss reduction and heat transfer enhancements in the channels with detached pinfin arrays.