Abstract: Ocean engineering serves as a cornerstone for maritime power strategies and global sustainable development. To systematically reveal the research landscape, innovation entities, and frontier evolution in global ocean engineering, this study conducts an in-depth analysis of 37889 publications from 2015 to 2024 based on the Web of Science Core Collection, employing bibliometric methods and knowledge graph analysis. The findings demonstrate: ① A fundamental shift in the global research center of gravity has occurred, with China emerging as the world's primary innovation contributor across key indicators including publication volume and citation impact—its annual publication share surged from 20.9% in 2015 to 60.1% in 2024; ② Innovation entities exhibit highly clustered characteristics, with leading Chinese universities such as Harbin Engineering University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University monopolizing the top 10 global institutional rankings, forming world-class “academic highlands”; ③ Through keyword co-occurrence and cluster analysis, seven frontier themes were identified, including marine renewable energy development, intelligent autonomous marine systems, highfidelity multi-physics simulation, and marine environmental sensing and data science, revealing that the field is being profoundly reshaped by trends of “intelligentization” “decarbonization” and “high-fidelity modeling”; ④ The journal influence landscape has been restructured, with the Chinese-hosted Journal of Ocean Engineering and Science achieving the highest impact factor (11.8) in the field, though platforms for global dissemination of top-tier research require further expansion. Finally, this study establishes a framework for modern ocean engineering frontiers centered on “sustainable & intelligent ocean engineering” supported by “three foundational pillars” and driven by “four enabling engines”. The research reveals China's historic transition from “follower” to “leader” in ocean engineering, provides researchers with a clear developmental roadmap, and profoundly elucidates the strategic urgency of building world-class scientific journals to secure academic discourse power and enhance national scientific soft power.

Key words: ocean engineering, knowledge graph, bibliometrics, research frontiers, journal analysis, sustainable development