Aiming at the SAR （synthetic aperture radar） imaging simulation application of ship targets in typical working modes， the electromagnetic signal emission and echo transmission models in strip mode， spotlight mode， and scan mode are established. Based on the panel method， the three-dimensional model of the ship target is divided into multiple triangular panels. The Shooting and Bouncing Ray algorithm is used to calculate the primary scattering and multiple scattering of each panel of the ship target， and the SAR echo signal is simulated. The range-Doppler imaging algorithm is used to eliminate echo aliasing and obtain SAR simulation image. Simulation experiments of multiple imaging modes and multiple imaging angles are performed on the ship target， and the simulated images are compared with the actual image of Sentinel-1A. The simulation results show that the proposed method can simulate more realistic SAR images of ship targets.