Blade pitch control of straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine

Collective pitch control and individual pitch control algorithms were present for straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine to improve the self-starting capacity. Comparative analysis of straight-bladed vertical axis wind turbine(SB-VAWT) with or without pitch control was conducted from the aspects of aerodynamic force, flow structure and power coefficient. The computational fluid dynamics (CFD) prediction results show a significant increase in power coefficient for SB-VAWT with pitch control. According to the aerodynamic forces and total torque coefficient obtained at various tip speed ratios (TSRs), the results indicate that the blade pitch method can increase the power output and decrease the deformation of blade; especially, the total torque coefficient of blade pitch control at TSR 1.5 is about 2.5 times larger than that of fixed pitch case. Furthermore, experiment was carried out to verify the feasibility of pitch control methods. The results show that the present collective pitch control and individual pitch control methods can improve the self-starting capacity of SB-VAWT, and the former is much better and its proper operating TSRs ranges from 0.4 to 0.6.