Abstract:The direct maintenance costs and operational reliability are two of the important indicators to measure vehicle market competitiveness. Due to the lack of systematic research in the field of railway industry, and in order to set maintenance requirements into the vehicle design, this paper hereby sets up an index system of maintenance requirements and proposes the whole life cycle management method of railway vehicle maintenance requirements. Finally, this paper combines the theory with the engineering practice, expounding how to constrain the design of the vehicle through the maintenance requirements management.