The front end light-blocked components of the third generation of synchrotron radiation facility, which are subjected to high heat load, are cooled with flowing water through the cooling channels. The convective heat transfer coefficient and the flow resistance (or pressure drop) are two important parameters for evaluating the heat transfer performance of the cooling channels and should be strictly quantified. In this research, two typical bent cooling channels in Shanghai Synchrotron Radiation Facility (SSRF) were modeled and their in-pipe turbulent flows were simulated. The two criteria obtained under different channel water velocities met the SSRF technical requirements. To reduce the total pressure drop, arc transitions were proposed to replace the right angle transitions in the cooling channels. At the same time, an experiment was performed to measure the convective heat transfer coefficient of a typical bent channel unit. The experimental results were in good agreement with the simulation ones.