BACKGROUND: Lung injury due to zinc chloride smoke inhalation is very common in military personnel and leads to a high incidence of pulmonary complications and mortality. The aim of this study was to uncover the underlying mechanisms of lung injury due to zinc chloride smoke inhalation using a rat model. METHODS: Histopathology analysis of rat lungs after zinc chloride smoke inhalation was performed by using haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and Mallory staining. A lung injury rat model of zinc chloride smoke inhalation (smoke inhalation for 1, 2, 7 and 14 days) was developed. First, isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantization (iTRAQ) and weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) were used to identify important differentially expressed proteins. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway analyses were used to study the biological functions of differentially expressed proteins. Then, analysis of lung injury repair-related differentially expressed proteins in the early (day 1 and day 2) and middle-late stages (day 7 and day 14) of lung injury after smoke inhalation was performed, followed by the protein-protein interaction (PPI) analysis of these differentially expressed proteins. Finally, the injury repair-related proteins PARK7 and FABP5 were validated by immunohistochemistry and western blot analysis. RESULTS: Morphological changes were observed in the lung tissues after zinc chloride smoke inhalation. A total of 27 common differentially expressed proteins were obtained on days 1, 2, 7 and 14 after smoke inhalation. WGCNA showed that the turquoise module (which involved 909 proteins) was most associated with smoke inhalation time. Myl3, Ckm, Adrm1 and Igfbp7 were identified in the early stages of lung injury repair. Gapdh, Acly, Tnni2, Acta1, Actn3, Pygm, Eno3 and Tpi1 (hub proteins in the PPI network) were identified in the middle-late stages of lung injury repair. Eno3 and Tpi1 were both involved in the glycolysis/gluconeogenesis signalling pathway. The expression of PARK7 and FABP5 was validated and was consistent with the proteomics analysis. CONCLUSION: The identified hub proteins and their related signalling pathways may play crucial roles in lung injury repair due to zinc chloride smoke inhalation.