Abstract
The drawback of the Darrieus type wind turbines is their low self-starting ability due to small generated torque at start. In the previous study, we have already designed a Helix-Darrieus type wind turbine applying helical twist to the basic straight Darrieus type blades along its circumference and conducted a series of wind tunnel tests. In the present study, we introduced curvature of the blades for swept-back angle to the Helix-Darrieus type blades to improve the self-startability further. The wind tunnel tests are conducted using two improved Helix-Darrieus type wind turbines havning different swept-back angles. The results show that the both torque and power coefficients at low wind speed are improved with the newly proposed Helix-Darrieus type wind turbines.
