The Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) needed to resurface six miles of State Route 60 in Polk County. For more than a decade, FDOT had installed similar roadway projects without use of a paving fabric, however it was disappointed with the lifetime performance of these resurfaced roads.
The spec for this project was open to all paving fabrics, but PETROMAT Plus-White was selected because its reflective properties increases visibility during night paving and remains up to 50 degrees cooler than dark paving fabric during daytime paving. Additionally, PETROMAT Plus-White’s solar reflective fabric is designed to allow asphalt to cool faster and stay cooler during installation, thus minimizing tack oil bleed through and asphalt tracking.
Approximately 6,000 square yards of PETROMAT Plus-White was installed. Prior to installation, the road was milled. PETROMAT Plus-White can be placed directly on any milled surface without a leveling course. Elongation, the amount of stretch an object can endure before breaking, is one area where Petromat Plus-White outperforms glass-based products. When a road is milled, peaks and valleys are created along its surface. An elongation of at least twenty percent is needed to conform to the milled surface. Because glass-based products have around three percent elongation, they will only reach from peak to peak and will split under construction traffic and overlay placement. Once the glass-based products break, there is no remaining strength nor moisture barrier and reflective crack resistance is compromised. For this reason, a leveling course must always be used beneath glass-based products over a milled or rough surface. Because PETROMAT Plus-White has a minimum elongation of 25 percent, it can easily conform to the entire surface of a milled pavement without breaking. The ability to install directly onto a milled surface, without a leveling course, saves significant time and money.
Once installed, PETORMAT Plus-white creates a stress absorbing interlayer that slows the progression of reflective cracking. When saturated with asphalt cement, it’s performance is equal to an additional 1.5” of overlay thickness.
PETROMAT Plus-White was easy to install and FDOT was so pleased with the result, that it plans to use the paving fabric on more projects.
Editor's Note: Scranton Gillette Communications and the SGC Infrastructure Group are not liable for the accuracy, efficacy and validity of the claims made in this piece. The views expressed in this content do not reflect the position of the Roads & Bridges' Editorial Team.
