The heat/mass transfer analogy for a backward facing step

•Heat/mass transfer analogy is experimentally verified for a backward facing step.•The analogy factor was found out to be 0.692.•The location of peak Nu and Sh is found to be 5.6H downstream of the step.•A new correlation for the maximum Nu (Sh) values has been proposed based on ReH.•The Sh and Nu values are found to be scaling with ReH0.65.