Secondary flow is the flow on the cross section normal to the main flow. It can greatly enhance the convective heat transfer. Mounting or punching vortex generators (VGs) on heat transfer surface can produce secondary flow. The heat transfer of circle tube bank fin heat exchanger with VGs or without VGs on the fin surface having ten different configurations (different fin spacing, height and attack angle of VGs) was numerically studied. It is found that if a non-dimensional parameter based on the absolute vorticity flux is introduced to specify the intensity of secondary flow, the volume average non-dimensional intensity of secondary flow has one-to-one correlation with Nusselt number for all the cases studied, but there is no such correlation with the friction factor. Considering the pressure drop produced by the shape of VGs, the ratio of cross section area reduction after introducing VGs is introduced to modify the friction factor. At the same fin spacing, both Reynolds number and the volume average non-dimensional intensity of secondary flow have one-to-one correlation with the modified friction factor. These results reveal that secondary flow intensity determines the heat transfer characteristics of the fin surfaces of circle tube bank fin heat exchanger only. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.