Bridge engineers seek new materials, configurations and other design elements to minimise rehabilitation frequency and intensity over the facility life and hence, reduce life-cycle cost. This article discusses the potential of stainless steel as a bridge deck reinforcement material. The superiority of stainless steel over traditional steel was evaluated on the basis of long-term agency cost and user cost. Using data from a US Midwestern state, the analysis was carried out for a majority of analysis scenarios. For the deterministic situation, the use of stainless steel as bridge deck reinforcement material was found to yield a significantly higher initial cost but drastically reduced the overall lifecycle costs, and thus is more cost-effective over the long term. For the uncertainty situation, Monte Carlo simulation was used to generate the distributions of the life-cycle cost for the stainless and the traditional steel reinforcement materials. It was found that the life-cycle cost for the stainless steel option stochastically dominates the life-cycle cost for traditional steel. Thus, under an uncertainty situation, the use of stainless steel as bridge deck reinforcement material is also more cost-effective compared to traditional steel.

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