Performance of an improved shock absorber designed for absorbing and isolating the oil test pipe vibration is researched in this paper. 3D finite element model is established for the analysis of the shock absorber system accurately by the FEA software ANSYS/LS-DYNA. Numerical simulations show that the effect of the shock absorber can be greatly improved by optimizing the plastic material parameter. In the practice petroleum well test, the new designed shock absorber showed good shock absorption effect and no damage on the detecting instruments was observed even after ten times loading.