Effects of conventional shot peening, severe shot peening, re-shot peening and precised grinding operations on fatigue performance of AISI 1050 railway axle steel

• RSP and precised grinding operations improve the surface quality after SSP. • RSP enhances non-indexed region and thickens the nanocrystalline structure. • Precised grinding has no adverse effect on the residual stress towards interior. • RSP has greater contribution on low-cycle fatigue performance compared SSP. • SSP played an impressive role on high cycle fatigue performance. In this study, effects of conventional shot peening, severe shot peening, re-shot peening and precised grinding were performed to AISI 1050. By two-stage operations (SSP + RSP), residual stress depth and the magnitude on the surface were quite high. While deepest compressive stress was measured in A24 + G, maximum stress was observed in A24 + N14. Grinding and re-shot peening powerfully reduced the roughness. The increase in SP intensity improved the hardness considerably, besides the most effective hardness depth was observed after A36. N7 and N14 contributed effective results in the low cycle fatigue, whereas A24, A18, A18 + N14 and A36 in high cycle fatigue.