Catching Up On Street Paving And Maintenance With FORTA-FI®

When choosing to use a FORTA-FI® high-tensile strength fiber for asphalt mix, city engineers, city administrators and road superintendents have specific reasons for opting for a fiber-reinforced pavement design.  Over the past four years an increasing number of municipalities have included FORTA-FI® HMA and WMA fibers as a part of their yearly paving programs.  

The decision to use the three dimensional advantages of fiber may be due to concerns with a particular problem roadway, which failed to live up to its predicted design life with a traditional mix.  Sometimes FORTA-FI® is specified to add strength to thinner overlay sections, in mill-and fill projects ranging from 2 1/2” - 1” (or even thinner ultra-thin placements).  Cities and towns have increased the number of streets that can be rehabilitated each year by milling-off less asphalt on the roadway and replacing the surface section with a FORTA-FI® fiber overlay.  

This allows them to get a new fiber-reinforced driving surface on more streets annually, while gradually decreasing the annual backlog of ‘past due’ paving projects.  Our patented aramid/polyolefin fiber blend can also help the durability of mixes used for roadway and parking lot patching in pot hole and utility maintenance situations, and FORTA-FI® PAT can be added to cold patch or hot patch asphalt to help ensure a successful repair.

FORTA-FI® fiber is added at the asphalt production facility at the simple dosage rate of 1 pound per 1 ton of asphalt.  It is a simple process to make a fiber-reinforced mix in both batch and drum plants by using the 1 pound bags of FORTA-FI® HMA-WMA-PAT fibers.  Manually adding the fiber is a great option for smaller roadway, parking lot, and trail paving jobs, and automated fiber-feeding equipment is available for larger projects that require more fiber-reinforced asphalt mix.  Since FORTA-FI® has been used in hundreds of asphalt applications throughout the country, your local asphalt producer may have already be familiar with the product or possibly used it in a project in your area.

For more information, please visit: www.forta-fi.com