The seismic performance of buildings can be improved by adding supplemental damping using friction dampers. The friction behavior of the metallic shims becomes more stable with increasing surface hardness ratio between the friction pair. However, as hardness increases, metallic materials tend to become more brittle, which increases the risk of accidental failure. This study investigated the performance of a friction energy dissipator using bearing steel (GCr15) treated by a grinding-strengthening process, a special manufacturing technology for bearings steel commonly used in mechanical engineering. Two base materials, Q355 and B450, were additionally compared with GCr15. Each base material used three different surface treatments, i.e., cleaned surface (CS), sand-blasting (SB), and grinding-strengthen (GS) treatments. The surface hardness of Q355-GS, B455-GS, and GCr15-GS increased by 13.62 %, 17.38 %, and 19.71% compared to their base materials, while sand-blasting didn’t have an increased effect on surface hardness. The nine specimens were quasi-statically tested to investigate the effect of surface treatment on the friction behavior of the metallic shims. For the three Q355-like and three B450-like specimens, the wear mechanism mixed abrasive and adhesive wear. The GCr15-CS experienced contact fatigue failure, while the GCr15-SB and GCr15-GS exhibited abrasive wear resulting in standard rectangular hysteretic loops with a high degree of coincidence. The friction performance of GCr15-GS was the best among the nine friction shims, because it has less loss in friction coefficient and strength during fatigue loading, the least fluctuation in bolt force, and the smallest degradation and coefficient of variation in friction strength.