In order to improve the energy regenerative efficiency of vehicle suspension, aiming at the characteristics of single cylinder shock absorber requiring volume compensation, a new single cylinder composite energy regenerative magnetorheological shock absorber was proposed based on the combination of linear energy regenerative and ball screw energy regenerative, the corresponding force model and energy regenerative model were established. MATLAB was used to conduct virtual bench test and study its mechanical characteristics. The model was introduced into the mathematical model of 1/4 vehicle with two degree of freedom semi-active suspension system, and random pavement simulation tests were performed using Simulink. The simulation results show that the dynamic deflection of the suspension and the dynamic load of the tire are reduced by 44.4% and 28.8% respectively under the control of the ceiling；compared with linear energy regenerative magnetorheological shock absorber, the energy regenerative efficiency of composite energy regenerative magnetorheological shock absorber is obviously improved;under the condition that the vehicle passes the C-class road surface at the speed of 40 km/h, the energy regenerative efficiency of the linear energy regenerative shock absorber is 9.3%, while that of the composite energy regenerative shock absorber is 14.6%.