Design of Small-Scale Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Passive Blade Pitch Control

Abstract

The increase in global energy demand fuelled by the increase in global population along with the need for sustainable and environment-friendly methods of electricity generation has shifted the focus to renewable sources of energy. One such form of energy is the wind energy. It is important to achieve the best possible performance from wind turbines to extract maximum amount of energy from the wind flow. This research work aims at designing a small-scale Vertical Axis Wind Turbine (VAWT) with suitable blade pitch control which would be useful in improving its performance. A three-bladed H-type Darrieus VAWT is considered with the NACA0021 airfoil as the blade cross-sectional profile. The pitch angle is made to vary sinusoidally with the position of the blade with respect to the direction of wind flow. The pitch angle amplitude used is 16°. A four-bar mechanism in the double crank configuration has been designed to implement collective blade pitching. Computer-aided design (CAD) models for various parts of the VAWT and the four-bar mechanism have been developed. The designs of these parts were found to be safe based on finite element analysis (FEA) carried out in ANSYS. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2025.