The issue of turbine lifetime is an important one, particularly for modern turbines operating at high temperature regimes. A cooling design such as ribs may achieve an improved lifetime and complex mechanisms of heat transfer need to be well studied. In this paper, a Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS) is presented for a 3-D channel flow with two square ribs on the lower wall. The full unsteady compressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved with an original hybrid finite difference/finite element scheme. The Reynolds number of the simulation is 7 000 based on the bulk velocity at the inlet and the channel height. The present study is mainly devoted to understand the mechanism of heat transfer at the wall through the topological analysis of the flow and the temperature flux. Results show that the large-scale structures generated by obstacles splash onto the lower surface and induce longitudinal vortices which enhance heat transfer at the wall. A comprehensive data base including 56 correlations was set up for testing and improving turbulence models for this complex, separated flow.