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Infrastructure maintenance management has become a challenge field for civil engineers and government managers because of the increasing number of deteriorated structures, their complicated spatial locations, the improved service requirements, the limited maintenance budgets and so on. Therefore, maintenance management approaches have been developed for civil infrastructures such as bridges and roads over the past several decades, but most of such approaches focused on one specific structure only – project‐level maintenance management. Now, there are increasing demands and appropriate conditions for network‐level maintenance management for civil infrastructure systems. Aims to explore such a maintenance management approach by integrating and applying the current information technologies, which include the database management system, geographic information system, genetic algorithm and the Internet. Several possible applications of each technology are discussed for solving real‐world problems.

The purpose of this study was to determine correlation between an accelerated cyclic corrosion test (S6‐cycle test) specified in Japanese Industrial Standards K5621 and field exposure tests, and to open up applications of the accelerated tests in various regional environments.

The S6‐cycle corrosion test was carried out on structural steels for 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 days and metal coating films for 100, 200 and 300 days. Comparing the weight loss of the steels with 1‐, 3‐, 5‐ and 9‐year field exposure test data at 31 sites in Japan. Correlation of the S6‐cycle tests to the field exposure tests was determined by acceleration coefficients.

The correlation between the S6‐cycle test and the field test on uncoated structural steels can be determined by acceleration coefficients based on flying salt amount. The coefficients were applicable for durability prediction of uncoated, zinc hot‐dip galvanized and painted steels.

In determination of the accelerated coefficients, only the flying salt amount was considered. Others factors such as temperature and humidity will be considered in future work.

Using the S6‐cycle corrosion test and its accelerated coefficients, the thickness loss of uncoated structural steels and zinc hot‐dip galvanizing is predictable in a short time. Corrosion degradation of coated steels is also predictable approximately.

This paper contributes to open up the application of accelerated cyclic corrosion test to evaluating corrosion resistance of steel bridge members.