Study and application of virtual flight simulation for rolling control of vehicles.

•A newly coupling simulation method was established to evaluate the performance of Flight Control system. The new method would completely consider the unsteady aerodynamic effect induced by rapid motion of vehicles or unsteady flow, while in the old engineering method, only less or even none unsteady effect is considered.•The simulation results firstly demonstrate that the traditional method may underestimate the lag of the control system, and the new established method is suitable far more than traditional method especially for a vehicle under the rapid maneuver.•The difference of unsteady effect of aerodynamics during the control process of vehicles with aerodynamic model and with CFD coupled method is analyzed, and the mechanism of aerodynamic model underestimating the lag of the control system is firstly revealed.