Project Description

VA Paving, the company that does a large majority of paving for Brevard County, FL, contacted FORTA and asked if we would do a project for NASA. This project served as a demonstration for NASA as well as the county to show the benefits of fiber. The project was a 1 ½” mill and fill in the left lane of N. Courtenay Parkway at 17th Street heading north approximately 1 mile and used 1,300 pounds of FORTA-FI reinforced asphalt. For this project, the FORTA Voyager was used to feed the fibers into the asphalt mix before paving. Using the Voyager makes adding fiber easy because the plant operator can start, stop, and adjust the feed rate to match the production rate of the asphalt plant without interrupting operations. FORTA-FI was easy to use since the fibers could be added to any approved mix design without it having to be modified. Longitudinal fatigue cracking was the issue for this project, and FORTA-FI has shown to reduce fatigue cracking by up to 95% in both laboratory testing and side by side field evaluations. The goal is to reduce cracking and extend the life of the overlay by 3 to 5 years.