抄録
This paper presents a numerical simulation and experiment on the effect of the variable pitch angle on the performance of a small vertical-axis wind turbine (VAWT) with straight blades. The power coefficient of the VAWT was measured in an open-circuit wind tunnel. By conducting two-dimensional unsteady computational fluid dynamics simulations using the RNG k-ε, Realizable k-ε, and SST k-ω models, the power and torque of the VAWT and the flow around the straight blades were also analyzed. The numerical simulation of the power performance results were validated using wind tunnel experimental data. The results of both the numerical simulations and experiments showed that a VAWT with variable-pitch blades has better performance than a VAWT with fixed-pitch blades. The numerical simulation of the performance using the RNG k-ε turbulence model had good qualitative agreement with the experimental results. The numerical simulation was able to capture the flow separation on a blade, and it was shown that a variable-pitch blade can suppress the flow separation on its blades at a tip speed ratio lower than that of fixed-pitch blades.
