Design and Wind Tunnel Experimentation of a Variable Blade Drag Type Vertical Axis Wind Turbine

The primary purpose of this research effort is to propose a novel efficiency boosting design feature in a drag type vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT), explore practicality through design and fabrication, and test the viability of the design through wind tunnel experiments. Using adaptive control surface design and an improved blade shape can be very useful in harnessing the wind's energy in low wind speed areas. The new design is based on a series of smaller blade elements to make any shape, which changes to reduce a negative resistance as it rotates and thus maximizing the useful torque. As such, these blades were designed into a modified Savonius wind turbine with the goal of improving upon the power coefficient produced by a more conventional design. The experiment yielded some positive observations with regard to starting characteristics. Torque and angular velocity data was recorded for both the conventional configuration and the newly built configuration and the torque and power coefficient results were compared.