One of the most important parts of the suspension system is the shock absorber,which plays an important role in slowing down the impact,reducing the vibration and protecting the body.The failure of the shock absorber will have a great influence on the ride comfort and handling stability of the car.It is important to judge the failure mode of shock absorber for design optimization and quality control.The failure discrimination mechanism of shock absorber was researched,and a fuzzy set recognition method for the power area unit of shock absorber was proposed based on performance tracing.The failure feature database of shock absorbers was established.By matching with the database,the failure mode was identified.LabVIEW software platform was used to develop a failure discrimination system of the shock absorbers.The results show that the system can be used to effectively judge the failure form of shock absorber.