Life cycle assessment tool for electromechanical products green design

Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a key technique to achieve green design. But it isn't applied widely because of its defects. In order to enhance the operability of LCA in green design, a LCA tool, named green product life cycle design (GPLCD) is described in this paper. The paper is divided into four sections: first, based on the analysis of the existing LCA method and the product design activities, the functional model of the LCA tool is built with IDEF0 methods. And then through analyzing the product and its life cycle activities, product's life cycle model is proposed and the functional unit class and process class are presented with object oriented design. Third, aimed to the problems of the data management of product's life cycle, product configuration management is integrated into GPLCD. Finally, a case on choosing material of impeller is given to testify how to use the LCA tool to support green design.