Overview and Design of PitchVAWT: Vertical Axis Wind Turbine with Active Variable Pitch for Experimental and Numerical Comparison

Due to advances in numerical modeling and hardware scaling, aspects of Vertical Axis Wind Turbines (VAWTs) can now be studied in greater detail than ever before. Turbine blade pitch has been proposed as a method to control overall turbine loading. A 1.5 meter diameter, 1.5 meter height 2 bladed H-Darrieus VAWT with individual blade pitch control has been designed, built, and tested at the wind tunnel facilities of Delft University of Technology. A computational model of the turbine has been made using an actuator cylinder formulation for multiple tip speed ratios and pitch offset values. The design of this turbine and initial data is presented. A comparison is made between measured normal force loading on the blades and the models predicted performance for multiple blade pitch scenarios.