Abstract: The fatigue behavior and fatigue life of 316 austenitic stainless steel with a gradient structured (GSed)surface layer produced by conventional shot peening the low-cycle fatigue regime with high total strain amplitude were studied. The surface integrity, including surface roughness, microstructure, hardness, residual stress and fracture surface morphology, was examined by using 3-D optical profilometry, optical microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, Vickers hardness tester and X-ray stress analyzer before and after fatigue. The results show that both unpeened and peened specimens exhibit similar cyclic deformation behavior. The GSed surface layer can accelerate the cyclic hardening and near cyclic stabilization processes, which play a non-negligible role in fatigue life decrement.Based on the surface integrity and fracture analysis, the decrease of fatigue life in peened specimen is resulted not only from the occurrence of multiple crack initiation sites due to the peening-induced high surface roughness and fatigue-induced hardness decrement at near surface region, but also to the faster crack growth rate caused by the complete release of compressive residual stress.