Railway Engineering Science - Letter from the Editor-in-Chief (show all)
I am delighted to announce the launch of Railway Engineering Science, an international, peer-reviewed and free open-access journal which is renamed from Journal of Modern Transportation but focused on a narrower scope, publishing original research articles and comprehensive reviews related to fundamental engineering science and emerging technologies in various rail transit systems.
Rail transit is traditional while still fascinatingly new. It came into being around two centuries ago, while glowing with a new look in recent decades and still exciting in future. For example, China has built the world’s largest high-speed railway (HSR) network of over 35,000 km, more than two thirds of the world’s total HSR mileage, by the end of 2019. More new lines are also planned and under construction. I am excited about the progress made by China that HSR network connects more than 550 cities and serves billions of people each year.
The world HSR network is still growing at a fast pace. Predictably, more and more issues will emerge and then be solved by interdisciplinary cooperation. My chief motivation of launching this journal was and will always be to provide the worldwide railway community with the most effective and powerful medium to publish high-quality open access research articles, to promote academic exchanges in railway engineering science and boost the scientific and technological development. We hope Railway Engineering Science will become the primary platform for researchers to share new findings in all aspects of rail transit. We hope it provides an important forum to address critical issues in the field, exchange new ideas and disseminate the latest developments in scientific research, industrial development and regulatory issues focusing on railway engineering and science. We hope it plays a valuable role in accumulating scientific data and promoting science-based industrial development for various advanced rail transit systems, such as high-speed railway, heavy-haul railway, urban rail transit, maglev system, and hyperloop transportation, etc.
Here we would like to offer a word of thanks to our contributors, and our editorial board members for their great support to the journal. I would also like to thank the sponsorship of Southwest Jiaotong University, fully covering the open-access fee, so that authors need not to pay any fees for their publications and articles are free for everyone worldwide to read and download.
Finally, I cordially welcome all readers and fellow researchers to submit your high-quality papers and contribute your work to this journal. I am also keen to hear your constructive ideas and suggestions for helping the growth of this new born but promising scientific journal.
Professor Wanming Zhai, Ph.D
Editor-in-Chief, Railway Engineering Science
Academician, Chinese Academy of Sciences
Professor Wanming Zhai is well known for his research in the field of railway system dynamics. He established a new theoretical framework of vehicle-track coupled dynamics so as to be able to investigate the dynamical problems of overall vehicle and track system. He developed a method for analyzing and assessing the running safety and ride comfort of high-speed trains passing through bridges based on train-track-bridge dynamic interaction theory. Both of them have been widely cited and successfully applied to more than 20 large-scale field engineering projects for the railway network in China, mostly for high-speed railways.
Professor Zhai won the National Science and Technology Awards by State Council of China in 2005 and in 2009, respectively. In 2006, he was awarded the Prize for Scientific and Technological Innovation by Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (Hong Kong) and Chang Jiang Scholars Achievement Award by Chinese Ministry of Education. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2011.
Currently, he is a chair Professor of Railway Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University (SWJTU), the Chairman of the Academic Committee of SWJTU, and the Director of Train and Track Research Institute. In addition, he is a trustee of International Association for Vehicle System Dynamics, the vice President of the Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and the vice President of the Chinese Society for Vibration Engineering.