Recently, a semi-active shock absorber has been taking interest because of its low cost and simple structure than the active one. CFD analysis has been conducted to investigate the continuous and variable damping characteristics of the semi-active shock absorber. Also, the flow resistance characteristics of a spool valve has been examined to identify individual parameters(namely, exponent and discharge coefficient) of pressure-flow rate relation needed for the accurate valve modeling. The flow field in the damping valve was simulated using the commercial code, CFX-5.3. The numerical results showed reasonable agreement with the experimental outputs. The pressure distribution with the variation of spool opening length and volume flow rate were discussed in detail. And the continuous and variable damping performance was found clearly. The individual parameters of spool valve were obtained as a function of orifice area. The exponent and discharge coefficient were fitted in with the first and the third polynomial respectively.