A bellows-type Reciprocating-Mechanism Driven Heat Loops (RMDHL) is a novel heat transfer device that could attain a high heat transfer rate through a reciprocating flow of the working fluid inside the heat transfer device. Although the device has been tested and validated experimentally, analytical or numerical study have not been undertaken to understand its working mechanism and to provide guidance for the device design. In a bid to improve the accuracy of the numerical models of the RMDHL, seven turbulence models for fluid flow have been alternately adapted and implemented in an existing numerical RMDHL model. The obtained results were studied and compared with prior experimental results to gain confidence and select the most suitable turbulence modeling techniques. The Boussinesq approximation has been used and the governing equations have been numerically solved using the CFD solver FLUENT. For the three-dimensional fluid flow, the turbulence models were studied are the Standard, RNG, and Realizable k - ε Models, Standard and SST k - ω Models, Transition k-k_L- ω Model and the Transition SST Model. The result of each numerical simulation have been analyzed and ranked using a numerical model calibration template. It was found that the standard k - ω Models provided the least accurate results while the RNG- k - ε Model provided the most accurate predictions. It is expected that the results will help improve the accuracy of the work on the RMDHL modeling.
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