Abstract: Conceptual design has a decisive impact on the overall costs of the product life cycle and low-carbon has become an important indicator to measure the product performance. In order to provide a basis reference for carbon footprint of product life cycle in its concept design stage, product concept design ideas based on low-carbon constraint are proposed, the goals and boundaries of conceptual design of a low-carbon products are determined, many factors about conceptual design based on low-carbon constraint are discussed, carbon footprint calculation model in the concept design stage and product concept design method based low-carbon constraint using function structure deployment (FSD) are provided. Iron core which is the important part of high energy-consuming transformer is discussed as example; its low-carbon design methods and mode are illuminated and this way will be instructive for overall design of transformer.

Key words: Carbon footprint, Conceptual design, Energy-intensive product, Low-carbon