Design, Construction, and Experimental Study of Small-Scale H-Darrieus Wind Turbine

Vertical axis wind turbine (VAWT) has been studied by various researchers to be competitive with horizontal axis one (HAWT) in terms of performance. This paper presents the design and realization of an experimental prototype of a small-scale vertical axis four-bladed wind turbine. A passive control technique was studied to improve the aerodynamic performance of the wind turbine. This technique is based on the dynamic orientation of the blades with a simple pitch mechanism based on the operating principle of the articulated four-bar system. The experimental results have shown that the aerodynamic performance is strongly conditioned by the maximum pitch amplitude.