The invention belongs to the technical field of side-scan sonar image processing, and in particular relates to a nonlinear enhancement method for side-scan sonar images. The present invention comprises the following steps: obtaining the original image from the original side-scan sonar data file, then sequentially performing gray scale normalization, neighborhood extremum suppression and Gaussian smoothing on the original image, and then calculating the low gray scale area for the smoothed image The maximum value, the minimum value of the high gray area and the middle gray area, and finally perform nonlinear correction on the above three areas respectively to obtain the enhanced image. Through the above steps, the present invention can realize the enhancement of effective signals and the suppression of invalid signals of the original side-scan sonar image quickly, effectively and at low cost, enhance the contrast of local features of the image, and maintain the monotony of the edge and gray distribution of the original image Sex, do not quote false edges, etc.