Cavitation peening (CP) is one of the surface modification techniques for metallic materials to introduce an equibiaxial compressive residual stress on their surface and it was demonstrated that the CP significantly decreases the fatigue crack growth rate on the modified surface during a plate bending fatigue test. To understand the mechanism underlying the peening effect, the present study presented a numerical model to address the crack retardation using a fatigue cohesive zone model. The present cohesive zone model incorporates the static fracture based on fracture mechanics and the fatigue damage accumulation based on damage mechanics. Using the finite element model, we investigated the effect of the surface residual stress introduced by CP for austenite stainless steel SUS316L, which was reported by our previous literature, on the retardation of crack growth. The simulated results demonstrated that the equibiaxial compressive residual stress is a main factor causing the crack retardation