A ground-based physical TDI CCD imaging simulation system is developed, which consists of a high precision satellite 3-axis attitude control simulation subsystem based on a 3-axis air bearing table, and a TDI CCD imaging simulation subsystem whose TDI image procedure is simulated by software using an area-array CCD. The designed system realizes the simulation of satellite 3-axis attitude control with a maximum pointing accuracy of 0.1° and a attitude steady accuracy of 0.01(°)/s, and implements an imaging simulation of 4-stage to 16-stage TDI CCD with the integration time of 0.1 s. Furthermore,the effect of satllite 3-axis attitude on the TDICCD photography is researched and the correction of the modeling theory for a space TDI CCD image motion model is proved. Experiment results show that the physical experiment results are in accordance with those of mathematical simulation and theoretical analysis, which justifies the feasibility of system design and the validity of image motion theory.