Significant investment is being made in recent years into autonomous driving and electric vehicles. Included within these developments are shock absorbers, which are responsible for optimized ride comfort and handling characteristics. Damping characteristics of these shock absorbers are determined largely by the piston and valve specifications, and many car manufacturers and shock absorber manufacturers spend large amounts of time and effort to achieve target damping characteristics.Disc valves in shock absorbers come in many diameters, thicknesses and shapes, and of these, the most dominant in terms of the effect on the overall damping curve are what are called “main valves”, which are the largest, plain circular disc valves in the set. In this study, the goal was to design and build a simulation test machine that measures the load on the main valves through their deformation in order to collect their precise mechanical attributes. Mechanical attributes of the valves and the corresponding damping curves of the shock absorber were compared to identify trends, in order to investigate the possibility of using the simulation test machine to predict a shock absorber’s damping characteristics by the use of load testing the valve assembly only.The simulation test machine uses a servomotor that drives a ball screw to control the position of the moving unit. The valve assembly is attached on the moving unit, which moves towards the load cell, onto which a valve presser jig is fixed. Further displacement of the moving unit causes the valves to deform, while the unit’s displacement and load are measured and recorded simultaneously.The main valves used in this experiment are 35mm in outer diameter, and 0.2, 0.3 and 0.4mm in thickness, from which 21 different valve combinations could be tested on both the simulation test machine and in actual shock absorbers. Shock absorber testing was carried out on MTS Roehrig SYD 3VS HV test equipment and data were acquired and analysed on Shock 6.5 Software. In all tests, all valve specifications and shock absorber specifications other than the main valve specification were kept constant. All test results within 5% of each other were considered equal to account for variability in shock absorber seal drag and measurement errors.Load-displacement results from the simulation test machine and damping force results from shock absorber tests using identical sets of valves were compared, and strong correlation was observed between the two sets of data. To determine the measurement accuracy of the test machine, a valve specification of 5 layers of 0.4mm thickness main valves were load tested five times in succession. The mean load at 2.0mm displacement was 2607.74 N with variation within 1.5% of the mean value, which indicates that the load measurement accuracy of the equipment is approximately 1.5%. Based on this study, subsequent studies could include further experiments as well as more theoretical analysis in fluid dynamics in order to determine a quantitative relationship between valve load-deformation curves and shock absorber damping curves. From this relationship, the desired shock absorber damping curve may be predicted without the time-consuming shock absorber assembly process.