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Unlike horizontal axis turbines, the Darrieus-type wind turbines have less efficiency and suffer from the self-starting inability. The effects of fixed and variable blade pitch angle as an idea for improving the performance of Darrieus turbine have been investigated using the CFD analysis, and a pitching system (variable pitch Darrieus-type wind turbine) has been proposed that can reduce both the blades oscillating motion and the magnitude of angle of attack in one revolution compared to that of the Darrieus-type wind turbines. In this study, the method of computational fluid dynamics with moving mesh has been used for analyzing the unsteady two-dimensional flow simulation. The numerical results show that the SST k-ω turbulence model matches well with the experimental results and can capture the flow separation phenomenon at low tip speed ratios. Also, it was observed that a small negative fixed pitch angle of −3° can delay the separation and improve the performance of wind turbine. The numerical simulation also showed that the variable-pitch blade turbine can reduce or eliminate the flow separation on its blades at a lower tip speed ratios than that of the fixed pitch blades. This result increases the starting torque and obtaining high efficiency with decreasing in torque ripple on blades during the turbine operation compared to that of the fixed-pitch blade Darrieus turbine.

Vertical axial wind turbines are the most commonly used turbines in residential and urban areas. This paper investigates the effect of combining Darrieus and Savonius wind turbines on power output and introduces a wind turbine with high starting torque addition to the wide working domain. A two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics transient simulation is developed, and a moving mesh is implemented for rotating moving parts. Comprehensive research has been carried out to investigate the effects of the initial overlap ratio (ɛ), arc angle Ø, and curvature (α) of Savonius blades on the performance of the turbine and 18 models are simulated at seven tip speed ratios. The results showed that combining the Darrieus turbine with the Savonius turbine has a favorable effect on self-starting performance. Also, it was observed that by changing each of the parameters, the primary model performance could be significantly improved. Finally, it is concluded that ɛ = 0.25, α = 0.25, and ∅ = 150 deg are the optimum values of the parameters which increase turbine power output compared to conventional vertical-axis turbines.

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