From engineering science towards engineering technology: development and prospect of transportation and vehicle engineering in new era

The National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) has actively promoted its reform, and has developed the technology and science sector. According to the essential requirements and main economic challenges of China, the NSFC has attempted to solve the underlying core technical and scientific problems and has stimulated the scientific research. As an important part of NSFC's technology sector, the transportation and vehicle engineering discipline should seriously and proactively respond to the NFSC targets and adjust to its funding policy in the discipline in a timely manner. Transportation and vehicle engineering studies are demand-driven and future-oriented. They integrate various types of technology and bring different fields together. In this study, the differences between transportation elements of different transportation systems and their uniqueness were analyzed from the perspective of "small discipline, large industry" to avoid blind sorting of the so-called "common scientific problems" of industry and applications. The development of an engineering science and engineering technology evaluation system based on RAMS theory, i.e., reliability, availability, maintainability, and safety, was proposed. The characteristics of each transportation system and the differences in their scientific bases were carefully examined to establish a selection method for key funding directions and feasible technical routes based on RAMS. In this way, the application of the proposed method can be boosted in project approval, application, evaluation, and post evaluation. The rapid and efficient transformation of scientific achievements can then be realized such that China can become a great transportation power. 8 refs.