An overlapped type of local neural network is proposed to improve accuracy of the heat transfer coefficient estimation of the supercritical carbon dioxide. The idea of this work is to use the network to estimate the heat transfer coefficient for which there is no accurate correlation model due to the complexity of the thermo-physical properties involved around the critical region. Unlike the global approximation network (e.g. backpropagation network) and the local approximation network (e.g. the radial basis function network), the proposed network allows us to match the quick changes in the near-critical local region where the rate of heat transfer is significantly increased and to construct the global smooth perspective far away from that local region. Based on the experimental data for carbon dioxide flowing inside a heated tube at the supercritical condition, the proposed network significantly outperformed some the conventional correlation method and the traditional network models. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.