Abstract:Distinguishing failure states is a core technology in aerial equipment failure forecast system,and it influences the accuracy directly.To solve the problem of failure distinction on aerial equipments,a mathod of failure forecast based on Mahalanobis distance is brought out.Firstly, Mahalanobis distance was introduced.Then,the state database and distinguishing model were founded,and the failure forecast process was given.In the end,the method was applied to the failure forecast of a certain airplane fire control system.The result shows that the average precision of on-line forecast is 98.48%,while the one of off-line forecast is 97.77%.It can be apparently indicated that Mahalanobis distance has a high value in application and it deserves to be spread widely,especially in the area of aerial equipment failure forecast.