With the characteristics of personalized design and high-quality forming,metal additive manufacturing（AM）has a tremendous developing potential in advanced manufacturing and plays a key role in design and manufacture of aerospace component. Based on a brief overview of the AM technology categories and theories,the research progress of forming mechanism in aluminum alloy additive manufacturing is elaborated and the coordination mechanism of structure and performance is described,involving laser additive manufacturing,wire arc additive manufacturing,electron beam additive manufacturing and solid-phase additive manufacturing. The current application of aluminum alloy AM technology in the aerospace field is analyzed,comprehensively. Finally,future research and development strategies of large load-carrying aluminum alloy components,manufactured by AM technology,in the direction of structure-performance control,one-piece structure design,material system,process database and intelligent additive-subtractive manufacture are proposed.