Several factors such as alloy composition, melt superheat, mold material, roughness of inner mold surface, mold coating layer, etc., can affect the transient metal/mold heat transfer coefficient, hi. An accurate casting solidification model should be able to unequivocally consider these effects on hi determination. After this previous knowledge on inter-facial heat transfer, such models might be used to control the process based on thermal and operational parameters and to predict microstructure which affects casting final properties. In the present work, three different directional solidification systems were designed in such a way that thermal data could be monitored no matter what configuration was tested with respect to the gravity vector: vertical upward and downward or horizontal. Experiments were carried-out with Sn-Pb hypoeutectic alloys (5 wt.% Pb, 10 wt.% Pb, 15 wt.% Pb and 30 wt.% Pb) for investigating the influence of solute content, growth direction and melt superheat on hi values. The experimentally obtained temperatures were used by a numerical technique in order to determine time-varying hi values. It was found that hi rises with decreasing lead content of the alloy, and that hi profiles can be affected by the initial melt temperature distribution. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.